Lathrop watched the thought lines on Salazar’s forehead deepen. He was seething, and with very good reason. In tight with the old-line South American growers and processors from the days when his father headed the clan, Lucio’s organization had been smuggling contraband across the U.S.-Mexico border for over half a century, starting with hot cars back in the fifties, and here in California was the principal polydrug distribution outfit along the Pacific coast, carrying cocaine, dope, pot, methamphetamine, name your favorite poison, from Chula Vista clear on up to Los Angeles and Frisco. The Quiroses were way down the hierarchy, with transit routes inland from northern Sonora into south Texas and sections of New Mexico, and until recently hadn’t done anything to challenge the Salazar empire, sticking to a relatively insignificant share of the coke market. New drug money, you might call them. But since they’d gotten tied in with El Tío’s network a year or so back—it was hard for Lathrop to believe he’d still been with the El Paso special field division at the time, my oh my how things had changed—there had been signs they were looking to make inroads into Salazar’s territory. What was now causing Lucio such profound and well-warranted distress was the sheer nerviness of the act—not only stealing some heavy dope, but intentionally humiliating him in the process, smearing his couriers all over the arroyo, killing his drivers, and leaving them with their mouths chock-full of their own privates.
You go dissing someone like Lucio Salazar with that kind of impunity, you’re sending a big, bold-faced message that there’s major juice behind you.
Salazar was still shaking his head with combined anger and dismay.
“I can’t accept this,” he said.
Which, Lathrop thought, was absolutely right on, assuming he wanted to stay in business.
“It’s got to be fixed,” Salazar said.
Which, Lathrop thought, equaled taking serious retaliation.
Salazar looked at him.
“You find out how the Quiroses knew when my shipment was coming, anything else about their setup, I give you my word of honor it’ll be worth a jackpot,” he said.
Lathrop nodded, making an effort not to smile. He often wondered if guys like Salazar copped their dialogue from television and the movies or vice versa. Or whether it was some weird kind of self-perpetuating loop. Reality mimicking fiction mimicking reality.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said and rose from his chair feeling mightily satisfied with his performance ... and just as strongly convinced it would lead to the results he desired.
Next stop on the road, Enrique Quiros.
“I’m leaning in favor of Ricci’s idea,” Gordian said to Nimec from behind his desk.
He reached for the container of rolled wafers in front of him, opened it, slipped a wafer out of the container, and stirred it in his coffee so the drink would pick up the flavor of its hazelnut praline filling. This new morning ritual was in observance of his wife’s latest dietary commandment: Thou shalt not drink hazelnut coffee. Her prohibition of his favorite blend rose from her theory that its hidden calories and fatty oils were responsible for the five-pound weight gain and slightly elevated cholesterol level revealed by his latest routine checkup.
The flavored coffee of which he’d been drinking three to five cups a day for the past year, therefore, was gone and out, per spouse’s orders, replaced on her shopping list by the cream-filled wafers he was allowed to dip, stir, and consume twice a day to satisfy his hazelnut craving, the equivalent of nicotine chewing gum to a smoker trying to quit the habit.
Admittedly, though, the sweet sticks were tasty, if not to say addictive, in their own right.
“My primary reservations concern the delicacy of placing our RDTs in host countries that might feel threatened by their activities, perhaps with some justification,” he said, letting the wafer steep in his coffee. “Or, trickier still, inserting them into hostile countries where we know in advance that their presence would be unwelcome.”
Across the immense desk from him, Nimec was trying not to betray his delight at now having gotten his second “yes” of the day—albeit another qualified one—with a fair and highly unexpected degree of ease.
“I can relay your concerns to Tom, see that he addresses them in a formal written proposal,” he said.
Gordian pulled the wafer stick out of his coffee and took a bite.
“That would be a reasonable start,” he said, looking happy as he chewed.
Nimec started to lift himself off his seat, eager to make his exit while the going was good.
Gordian raised a hand.
“One last thing before you go,” he said.
Nimec settled back down, waited.
“I’m with Megan that Rollie Thibodeau has to accept the plan, at least in theory, before we take it any further.”
Nimec considered that a moment, then nodded.
“I’ll ask her to talk to him,” he said.
“No,” Gordian said.
Nimec looked at him.
“No?”
Gordian shook his head.
“You do it,” he said.
Nimec kept looking at him.
“She’s better with Rollie than I am, two of them go way back,” he said. “They’ve got a rapport.”
“And that’s precisely why it’s going to be you and he who have the conversation,” Gordian said. He took a gulp of coffee, the wafer back in his cup like a swizzle stick. “The fractiousness I saw aboard the yacht last week troubles me. If it continues, our organization is going to split into separate camps, and once that happens, we’ll cease to be a functional team. Think about it, Pete. It has to stop.”
Nimec ballooned his cheeks, slowly released a breath.
“Ought to be an interesting chat,” he said.
Gordian smiled.
“Ought to be,” he said and munched down the rest of his treat.
SIX
SAN JOSE/SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA NOVEMBER 4, 2001
EVERY DAY IT WAS THE SAME, FOR THE WHOLE DAY. Trying to work through the deepening bog of paperwork in front of him. Trying to decide which decisions needed to be made first and which could be deferred until later. All across his desktop half-finished fiscal reports and operational plans silently screamed for his attention. Employment applications, personnel evaluations, and equipment requisitions were spilling from his overloaded in box like tenants from a collapsing high-rise. Only the adjoining out box was uncluttered, and that sure as hell wasn’t much encouragement. It seemed sadly neglected, waiting for something to drop into it.
Six months after his elevation to the post of global field supervisor, Rollie Thibodeau had still to feel any balance between the continuous supervisory and administrative demands of an organization as large as Sword and his personal capacity to fulfill them.
It wasn’t that he’d been ignorant of the job’s responsibilities when Megan Breen offered it to him, nor had he failed to recognize it would mean spending many more hours in an office chair than he ever did heading up night security at UpLink’s Brazilian manufacturing compound. Except ...
A desolate frown creased Thibodeau’s face.
Too much sit-down break trousers, he thought. It was a Louisiana bayou adage that went back forever, and he could remember his mother chastening him with it time and again when she’d caught him shirking his chores around the house. Too much sit-down break trousers. You wore out the back of your pants as quickly sitting on your rump as doing honest work. Though maybe his rump was the most functional part of him these days, being one of the few spots on his body that hadn’t been drilled by a slug in Brazil.
Not that anyone had expressed the tiniest smidgen of unhappiness with his performance to date. On the contrary, Gordian, Nimec, and Megan all seemed to approve of the way he was handling things. The dissatisfaction, the discontent, came entirely from inside him.
“Watcha gonna say, boy?” he asked himself aloud. “Watcha gonna goddamn say, huh?”
Shrugging, Thibodeau reached into his brea
st pocket—as was his often-noticed preference, he had on the official indigo blue Sword uniform blouse usually reserved for members of active security details rather than executives at the San Jose office tower, where business suits were the norm—and pulled a satiny Montecristo No. 2 from a two-finger leather cigar case. It was one of the few remaining torpedoes he’d brought from Cuiabá, beaucoup hard to find, and he’d planned to savor it over some drinks at his favorite local tavern tonight. But he felt ready for some uplifting, damn ready, and wasn’t about to stand on occasion.
He had been appointed to one of the top posts in Sword, a post that had, in fact, been created especially for him, with a commensurate raise that boosted him into an income bracket he’d never even considered within reach. Yet he felt a total lack of achievement or gratification, a gnawing absence of confidence that he was suited to the role. Making him, what, some kind of pretender ?
Because he knew how much faith was being placed in him by people he respected and cared for, how much rested on his shoulders, Thibodeau was ashamed of himself for feeling as he did.
And then there was Tom Ricci, one of the most galling, cocksure bastards he’d ever met, always pushing fire. Thibodeau hated sharing the job with him, and to compound matters, was angered over the position he’d just been put in because of him. Of being forced to either nix or okay a move to which he’d vehemently objected when it was proposed and that he still maintained was wrongheaded, but that everyone else involved in the decision-making process had been convinced was worthy of a go.
“On a trial basis, ” Pete Nimec had qualified when soliciting his approval. “With constant oversight. ”
As he’d listened to him, Thibodeau had felt increasingly boxed in despite the repeated attempts to allay his concerns. Sometimes, he’d thought, one bad move could cost you the whole game.
Now he clipped the end of the cigar with his Swiss army knife, forgoing the expensive double-blade guillotine cutter he’d received as a fare-thee-well from his crew in Brazil. Having been relegated to the back corner of a desk drawer, it was a gift that was much appreciated for the sentiments it represented but was also much too fancy for his liking.
Thibodeau struck a match and lit up, carefully holding the tip of the cigar at the edge of the flame, turning it in his hand until it caught all the way around. Then he raised the cigar to his mouth and smoked.
Looking across his desk at the empty chair where Nimec had sat only minutes before, Thibodeau again recalled his limber pitching style, so reminiscent of Megan’s approach that he’d wondered if she had been offering pointers.
“We proceed either unanimously or not at all,” Nimec had said, after first relaying the news that Gordian and the others had come down in favor of establishing an RDT section. “Decision this important, it’s got to have your support.”
Thibodeau’s reply was blunt.
“My opinion’s what it is,” he said. “Don’t expect me to change it to suit the boss.”
“Nobody wants that, Rollie. I’m here to see whether I can convince you to agree to this, not accede under duress.”
“An’ Gordian?”
“Gord shares some of your qualms, and he’s especially concerned about stretching the hospitality of countries where we might have to send in teams. You spent over a year in Brazil dealing with their government and law enforcement agencies—”
“An’ way before that, a couple back-to-back tours of duty with the Air Cav commandin’ a long range recon patrol in Vietnam,” Thibodeau interrupted. “Choppers would drop us into enemy territory, we’d search and destroy. My units knew our mission an’ were the best at what we did. But the bigger mission, one sunk us into the war, that wasn’t so clear, an’ we both know how it ended.” He’d snorted with disgust. “Lesson learned, least by me.”
Nimec was undeterred. “What I was about to say, Rollie, is we were hoping you could draw on your experience. Help to define the circumstances that would warrant launching an RDT into the field, stipulate the rules and constraints it would operate under to avert political incidents, and so forth. Give us a total strategic framework.”
Thibodeau shook his head.
“Say I ain’t willin’,” he said. “What then?”
Nimec had looked him straight in the eye.
“Then I walk out of here and into Gord’s office and report that the plan’s DOA,” he replied. “I said ‘unanimous,’ and I meant it.”
Thibodeau was quiet. Nimec’s embracing reasonability was hard to argue with, but he couldn’t stop himself from trying.
“An’ where’s Tom Ricci fit into the plan?” he asked. “What’s he supposed to do while I’m cookin’ up strategy?”
Nimec had seemed prepared for the question. “My idea is for Ricci to concentrate on tactical issues,” he said.
“Tactical.”
“And on training,” Nimec added.
Thibodeau wondered why that stung him. And tried not to show it did.
“You discuss that with him yet?”
“No, but—”
“So how you know he gonna take to it?”
“I don’t think he’ll object. The field’s where his talents would be best applied and where he’s most at home,” Nimec said. “It’d be a kind of dual-path approach, with Megan and yours truly coordinating.” He paused. “I recognize that you two have had trouble meshing, and for the present it seems like the most balanced, workable arrangement.”
More silence from Thibodeau. Again he’d felt that he was groping for a reason not to cooperate.
Nimec had moved forward in the chair opposite him, his hands on the edge of the desk, his gaze unwavering.
“Come on, Rollie,” he’d pressed. “Give it a try.”
Thibodeau waited another few seconds to answer, then expelled a relenting sigh.
“Go ahead an’ count me in,” he said. “But I got my doubts. Mighty ones.”
“Understood,” Nimec said.
Thibodeau shook his head. “Maybe, maybe not,” he said. “This ain’t nothin’ between me an’ you, but I want my feelings on record.”
Nimec responded with a quick nod.
“It’ll be easy enough for me to note them in my memo to Gord and carbon copy it to you,” he said. “Settled?”
After a moment’s further hesitation, Thibodeau had told him it was, more or less concluding their parley on a note of accord. Although that had done nothing to resolve the inner conflict he was experiencing—and still didn’t fully understand.
He snapped back to the present, puffing on his Montecristo. As always, he enjoyed the rich flavor of its tobaccos, the mild tingle it left on his tongue. But why wasn’t it having its usual calming effect on him? Lifting away his cares in puffs of aromatic smoke?
He pushed himself out of his chair, feeling a sudden need to get out from behind the desk. Fragments of his conversation with Nimec refused to leave his mind—one in particular—and he wanted desperately to shake it. To quiet the mingled resentments swirling around inside him like some sort of nebulous cloud, now swelling in his gut, now sending flares of heat into his chest.
“My idea is for Ricci to concentrate on tactical issues. The field’s where his talents would be best applied ... where he’s most at home. ”
Thibodeau strode around the desk and paced the office with his hands behind his back, the cigar thrust straight out between his lips, smoke pouring upward from the corners of his mouth.
Then, abruptly, he ceased to pace. He realized he was standing in front of his desk, staring at his heaping in box.
Staring at it with eyes that burned fiercely with anger and frustration.
Ricci. Tactical issues. Field’s where he’s most at home.
His hand shot out with sudden violence, sweeping the in box off his desktop. It struck the wall with a crash, papers spilling from it, littering the floor. Thibodeau felt the vicious urge to take a giant rushing step over to the box and kick it across the room like a soccer ball, to stamp it to p
ieces before getting down on his knees and tearing up its scattered contents as he came upon them, flinging the tiny shreds of paper into the air, watching them drift down on his office furniture like tiny bits of confetti....
And then he got hold of himself. All at once, got hold. The red haze of anger peeled from his vision to leave him looking at the strew of forms and documents that had flown from the overturned in box, his expression marveling and horrified, hardly able to believe his eyes.
What had he done?
What in God’s name was wrong with him?
Thibodeau stood there as if waiting for an answer.
When it didn’t come after a long while, he knelt and slowly began gathering the papers off the floor.
In his navy blue blazer, olive golf shirt, and dark khaki slacks, Enrique Quiros might have been a particular brand of contemporary executive: Ivy League, thirtyish, perhaps the founder of some Internet-based corporation. The cut of his wavy black hair was short, neat, and un-fussy. The glasses through which his intelligent brown eyes peered out at the world were lightweight tortoise-shell with wire stems. His slender build was that of a careful eater and dedicated exerciser.
He was, indeed, an alumnus of Cornell Business School. The prismatic lettering on the door of his third-floor office suite in downtown San Diego read Golden Triangle Services, a corporate name apparently referring to the area northeast of La Jolla, where it was clustered in among many of the city’s upstart, high-tech businesses.
The office decor was bright and open, with smooth plexiglass surfaces, beige carpeting, some muted abstract prints on the walls, and a spacious conference corner where a pair of his bodyguards now sat on a raw-sienna leather sofa, looking respectable and respectful, eyeing Quiros’s visitor indirectly, as feral wolves might to signal cautious nonaggression.
The slight bulges of the firearms hidden under their sport jackets would have been unnoticeable to the average observer, but Lathrop had discerned them immediately as he arrived for his appointment. He wasn’t at all bothered. The guns were solely for their employer’s protection, and Lathrop intended no threat. Also, he himself was carrying and had confidence he’d be able to take both men out before their hands got anywhere near their weapons, in the unlikely event of a problem.
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