by Andrew Watts
Up here it was quiet. Empty. Just two cars and two men. Neither man wanted to be seen with the other, although not for the same reasons.
“You’re with the firm?” Dicks asked, referring to Joseph Dahlman’s lobbying agency. Ron Dicks had used a back channel to contact them a day earlier. Dicks was trying to figure out a way to smooth things over.
So was Syed.
Unbeknownst to either party on the line, the ISI had listened to the phone call, provided courtesy of a Chinese communications security firm Syed had hired. Their capabilities were excellent. Within an hour, the lobbying firm had received another phone call rescheduling the meeting for a later date. The voice on the phone was computer-generated, and a perfect match for Ron Dicks.
The ISI had then reached out to Dicks via text message and orchestrated a new meeting time and place. At a discreet location, just like the Senator’s chief of staff had requested.
“I am with the firm, correct. Good evening, Mr. Dicks,” Hugo replied, reaching out his hand.
Dicks walked towards Hugo, his own arm outstretched. They shook hands and then Hugo motioned for him to get in the passenger seat of Hugo’s own vehicle. They both got in and shut the doors.
Dicks was jittery. “We need to find a solution here. Some common ground. I assume your firm is still in touch with the Pakistanis? This wasn’t what I signed us up for. There’s got to be some middle ground that we can—”
Hugo’s movement was swift. He swung his arm across to the passenger side, landing a strong open-handed strike to the trachea.
Dicks’ mouth let out an involuntary burst of spittle and air, and then he doubled over, making a choking noise and holding his throat. Hugo leaned back in his seat and looked around the still-empty parking lot. All clear. He opened up the center console of the sedan and removed a prepared syringe. He jabbed it into Dicks’ neck and depressed the plunger until it met the stop.
Dicks’ eyes went wide at the sting. His body was now flooded with a neuromuscular paralytic. The same type of drug anesthesiologists used, only in much smaller doses.
With Dicks still holding his throat, Hugo started the engine and drove his vehicle so that the passenger side was right next to the trunk of Dicks’ BMW. Ron Dicks was now losing control of his faculties. Hugo put on a pair of thin flesh-colored latex gloves and cleaned up his car, careful to wipe off the parts that he’d touched.
He checked his victim by pulling back on his shoulder. A wheezing noise and a twitch of his eye told Hugo that the drug was still in effect. But things were far enough along now.
Hugo grabbed the keys from Dicks’ pocket and popped his trunk by pressing the button on the key fob. He shut off his own engine, got out, walked around and quickly but casually transferred the still-alive body into the trunk. From his spot on the parking garage and the time of night, there was about a one percent chance that someone could have seen this activity, and a zero percent chance that someone would see his face.
He shut the trunk and then re-parked his car so that it was in a spot, not wanting to attract attention. Then he wiped it down once more.
Minutes later, he was driving Ron’s BMW north towards the Potomac. It was dark by the time he reached Riverbend Park on the south side of the Potomac. He shut his lights off, broke the gate lock, and opened it, driving through towards the water. He arrived at a small boat landing a moment later. Here he was just to the west of Great Falls, where the river turned into a roaring grinder of white water and sharp rocks.
Hugo popped the trunk and removed the body, carrying it into the water and giving it a push into the current.
Ron Dicks’ body was discovered the next day, bloated and battered and miles downstream.
Chapter 10
El Paso Intelligence Center
El Paso, New Mexico
Wilkes followed the DEA assistant special agent in charge (ASAC) into the break room of the Task Force Echo ops center. The two men got a quick coffee fill-up before the long night, then walked down the hall towards the secure facility in the central part of the building.
“So your agent is on scene tonight?”
“That’s right,” said Wilkes.
“Hope she’s careful. Sinaloa is rough.”
Caleb Wilkes was nervous for his agent, Ines Sanchez. He wasn’t sure she was ready for this kind of exposure, but in the field, one had to make do with the materials on hand. Wilkes had done his best to steer her away from kinetic operations involving the violent and unpredictable gangsters of her country.
Until tonight.
Ines Sanchez had grown up in Mexico City, where she had been a part-time model, part-time call girl. Her modeling career had led to a job as an actress for a syndicated soap opera shot in Mexico City, and she’d stopped taking clients for her secondary occupation.
Ines had had dreams of getting picked up by a Hollywood agent and leaving Mexico for the US to become an actress there. Wilkes had fanned those flames and offered to introduce her to a few contacts he had in the City of Stars. The promise of a better future was a case officer’s best carrot.
She was young compared to most agents he ran—only twenty-six. But she was effective, relatively reliable, and brave. She seemed to get a kick out of working for Wilkes, and was quite happy with the monthly “consulting fees” that were wired to her numbered bank account on the island of Curaçao.
“Are you turning me into a spy?” she had asked him one night, early after her recruitment.
“No, Ines. You’re an actress. Think of me as your director. On my stage, there aren’t lights or cameras. There will be no clapping audience or adoring fans waiting for you after the show. But you’ll have great rewards, if you want them. You’ll help to make the world a better place. And eventually, I’ll help you to become the star I know you can be.”
She had liked that. The thought of doing good, and the twinkle of future fame. Sanchez, like nearly everyone else on the planet, just wanted a better life. When Wilkes had discovered her six months ago, she had been trying to sleep her way to the leading role in her soap opera. Determined and shameless, but cleverer than most girls her age. Wilkes had seen potential.
Three weeks after her recruitment, she had begun having social visits with a Russian diplomat in Mexico City, one that Wilkes had suggested could be a good person to know, if she was looking for someone to buy her drinks for an evening. From the Russian’s careless pillow talk, Ines had been able to provide Wilkes with the names of three SVR officers operating out of the local Russian embassy. Two had been known operatives, confirming the accuracy of the information. But the third name was new. Not bad work for the new girl.
With a little discipline and training on her part, and some Hollywood arm-twisting on his, Wilkes truly intended to make her into a full-fledged movie star. Then he could really put her to work. Wilkes’s team of spies, which included Max Fend, were among the world’s most rich and famous. They had exclusive access to elite clubs and social castes. Whether they achieved that status on their own or Wilkes grew them into it mattered little to him. He was about results.
But for Ines Sanchez to blossom into the productive Hollywood star and agent of the CIA, she needed to be alive and unscarred.
Tonight, that could prove to be a challenge.
Wilkes knew that his agent would likely end up in bed with Rojas this evening, and a part of him felt bad about that. But it came with the job. If a few moments of undesirable disgust for the girl meant bringing down one of the world’s most powerful drug kingpins, and uncovering a highly placed American traitor, so be it. His occupation involved deception and moral ambiguities, and he had learned to live with that a long time ago.
“You been down here before?” asked the DEA escort as they walked down the hallway.
“First time,” replied Wilkes.
The El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) was jointly run by the DEA and US Customs and Border Protection (CBP). More than a dozen other agencies were represented there as well. FBI, CI
A, NSA, ATF—you name it. There were over three hundred employees in El Paso, all working diligently to counter the Mexican cartels. It was hard work. The drug war against Mexican cartels was a furnace, and each agent stationed here was another coal in the fire.
The DEA man slid his card through the door’s electronic reader, and they both entered the operations center, receiving a few hardened looks from the night crew. The mood inside the room was tense, but Wilkes got the impression that it was routine.
The DEA agent walked to his cluttered desk and sat on the front edge of his black adjustable chair. He scrolled through his messages, then brought up the surveillance schedule to show his CIA guest what was on tap for the night.
A drone flew over the Sierra Madre Mountains. A satellite pass was set up to provide live feed to this center via satellite. Several teams of human surveillance reported in throughout the region. The aerial surveillance video feeds were displayed on screens in the front of the room.
The DEA supervisor introduced Wilkes to his duty section crew. Wilkes asked which screens would show the townhome in Mazatlán where his agent was going to be. One of the DEA men pointed to the right monitor. The imagery was pretty clear but a little jumpy. One of the agents coordinating with the drone operator showed Wilkes how the high-resolution feed was able to toggle between full-color video, infrared, and night vision. The view now showed the front and rooftop patio of an upscale townhouse. A trio of petite, scantily clad women were drinking and dancing under an arbor on the roof. Two men sat at a table, beer bottles in front of them. The narcos.
“This is the drone?”
“Correct. That screen over there is the satellite. We’ll have it for another hour. The NSA folks also have access to their signals intelligence during that timeframe.”
“Got it.”
In Wilkes’s experience, the link was only so good whenever satellite comms were involved. But the sophisticated suite of sensors on board the bird would extract extremely valuable electronic data from the area, and that could drastically improve their situational awareness. The whole trade was going increasingly to cyber. Wilkes, like most from his generation, longed for the good old days of the Cold War. Give him a handheld radio and a 9mm Beretta any day.
Wilkes watched his girl on the monitor. One of the three dancing Latinas, gyrating with each other on the rooftop. The unfortunate object of one Hector Rojas’s affection.
Rojas was a one-time big shot Mexico City accountant—if accountants can be called big shots. He had been scooped up by the Sinaloa cartel and promoted through the ranks when the previous head of cartel finance had been found missing his lower torso after a run-in with a competing enterprise.
Wilkes had arranged for Ines Sanchez to be introduced to Hector Rojas several months ago, at a party in Playa del Carmen. They had hit it off, but Wilkes had made sure that Ines left for the evening without giving him what he was looking for. She had flirted with Rojas over social media for the next few weeks, sending him revealing photographs and hinting that she would like to see him again.
The messages were carefully curated by a team at the CIA that specialized in psychological manipulation. Rojas could have his choice of beautiful local women. But Wilkes and the analysts calculated that the allure of bedding a semi-famous TV star would reel him in.
EPIC intelligence reports on Rojas indicated that he had several mistresses. But he dropped everything whenever Ines sent Rojas a message that she would be coming to town.
The trap was set.
Wilkes watched the girls dancing and felt internal pinpricks of stress increased in magnitude. He told himself to relax. Trent and Max were both in position. Wilkes had gotten the message from Renee. There were more people at the townhome than expected, but Max and Trent could overcome that. Everything would be fine.
A DEA agent at one of the computer terminals across the room snapped his fingers to get his boss’s attention, concentrating on something he was listening to on his headset.
“What is it?” the DEA supervisor asked.
“Boss, something’s up. The NSA folks are picking up some unusual chatter from the narcos.”
“About?”
“Several truckloads of foot soldiers, all moving fast.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Where are they going?”
The DEA man pointed at the video display. “There. The narcos are sending a shitload of guys to that townhouse.”
Wilkes face went white.
Trent Carpenter sat alone in the darkness, looking through the blinds to the cartel townhouse across the street. Performing clandestine street-level surveillance was painstaking, tiresome work. He was perched like an eagle, eyeing its prey from high up, observing everything in silence.
He’d been here for over ten hours. Three plastic one-gallon water jugs lay on the floor next to him. Two were still for drinking. One was now for peeing. As the only surveillance operator with a clear view across the street, he couldn’t risk leaving his post.
A high-res camera stood on a tripod next to him, its imagery uplinked to a satellite one hundred miles above the surface of the earth and then relayed down to Renee’s computers. Max had helped him set it up earlier, along with a few other cool devices that could pick up nearby cell phones and activate their receivers, but Trent wouldn’t touch those toys unless he had to. Renee was doing all that.
On the floor at his feet was his own set of tools. A large black canvas bag filled with weapons and gear. Trent watched the narco security guards on the street, standing outside their pickup trucks, smoking and shooting the shit. Their bosses on the outdoor patio on the roof, dancing with the full-breasted beauties—imports from Mexico City, one of whom was a CIA informant. He fought the urge to lift up his suppressed rifle from the floor and begin picking them off right now.
These were the men that had made money off the death of his brother. Josh, a father, husband, brother, son, and decorated veteran. Now a dead heroin junkie—a statistic in the war on drugs. A deep rage swelled up inside him whenever Trent thought about it. Which was often.
Trent wasn’t completely sure that he trusted this CIA guy, Wilkes. But he trusted Max Fend. Fend was a good dude, and Trent had the feeling that they were both here for the same reason.
Guilt. Or justice. Or some combination of the two. Trent kept thinking that maybe if he had killed or captured enough narcos, or stopped enough drug shipments back when he was here with his special operations team, Josh would still be alive. He knew it was a stupid thought, but that didn’t stop it from popping into his mind.
During Trent’s time as a special operations advisor to the DEA in Mexico, he’d learned the truth about counternarcotics. The big arrests were only temporary wins. And even those were rare occurrences. Normally law enforcement didn’t catch anyone of consequence. Even when they did catch one of the kingpins, if the guy was locked up in Mexico, half the time he still ran his operation from the joint. Those prisons were often nothing more than posh luxury hotels set up as narco penalty boxes. Sometimes the wardens and guards were on the cartel payroll. The guards that didn’t go along with it either quit or were found dead. Suicide, with three bullets in their head. Shit.
Tonight would be satisfying. There were several more narcos than expected, but eventually the party would die down and people would go to sleep. If not, Trent and Max had talked about waiting until two or three in the morning and taking them when they were most vulnerable. There were four security guards, and two more narcos inside. Trent was pretty sure he’d have no problem with those odds, especially since he had the first-mover advantage. With Max’s help, they were sure to succeed.
“Trent, come in,” came Renee’s voice through his headset, breaking his train of thought.
Max and Trent had told her to check on them every fifteen minutes. Trent looked at his watch. She was very precise.
“Gentlemen, Wilkes just sent me a warning. Something is wrong. The cartel is sending multiple vehicles towards your p
osition.”
Max said over the radio, “ETA?”
“A few minutes, tops.”
Max was in a beat-up-looking sedan about one hundred yards down the street from Trent’s position, parked in a lot that gave him a view of the townhome and surroundings.
“Renee, give us more info. What do you have?” said Max.
Renee said, “A few minutes ago, the drone picked up a spike in electronic emissions from the narcos’ cellular devices. The NSA techs matched the movements to multiple vehicles moving in the area. The conversations say they’re showing up at Rojas’s pad. What do we do, Max?”
Dammit.
“Hold tight. Trent, be ready to evac through the rear of your building and I’ll pick you up.”
“Copy.”
Max knew that the imagery and electronic sensors were provided by American drones based out of an Air Force base in Texas. With the quiet approval of the Mexican government, the drones flew almost nightly reconnaissance missions over areas where the cartels ran their operations. But analysis from a drone usually wasn’t that accurate in such a short timeframe. Was it possible this was a false alarm? Maybe the cartel trucks weren’t really headed there. Maybe they were just going nearby.
Trent’s voice. “Vehicles spotted. There they are.”
Damn.
Max could see them too. A convoy of dark pickup trucks and SUVs came to a halt on the steep curb just outside Rojas’s townhome.
A twinge of fear crept up Max’s spine as he watched at least a dozen armed men exit the vehicles.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Renee’s voice was in his ear, saying what he was thinking. “Do they know we’re here?”
Trent slowed his breathing and held still. Even though he was behind closed shades in an unlit room, his instincts warned him of the increased danger. It seemed like half the Sinaloa cartel was forming up on the streets just outside his window. Through the cracks in the window shades, he saw the lights of other homes on the street flicker on. The residents were probably nervous about the sudden influx of cartel muscle, maybe sensing that these men weren’t the usual type.
