by Ty Patterson
‘I’ll do my best, sir, but you know very well that I can’t promise any results. We might well end up investigating for years with no happy ending.’
Director Murphy replied, ‘Your best is what I want. I can deal with whatever shit comes out, even if nothing comes out.’
‘Sir, you know I’ll have to investigate everyone…’ Broker trailed off.
Murphy smiled grimly. ‘Mister, I would have been disappointed in Clare’s judgment if you didn’t investigate Isakson and me. If you come up with something interesting in our lives, let us know. Our lives have forgotten what interesting is, these last few years. Has Isakson sorted out everything for you?’
Broker nodded and stood up to leave. Director Murphy leaned across to clasp his hand, his grip as hard as concrete.
He looked in Broker’s eyes, and his voice softened the slightest. ‘I’m sorry about your loss. You know Isakson couldn’t do anything else.’
Broker bent his head just once and left.
Director Murphy didn’t have to say that, he thought, but it showed the kind of person he was. Didn’t mean Broker’s opinion of Isakson had changed.
He stood at the corner of the avenue and whistled for a cab. Nothing happened. He shook his head. Of course nothing would happen. This wasn’t New York. His confidence in New York’s superiority restored, he hoofed it to the nearest Metro and made his way to the airport.
He called Bear the next day.
‘You guys still chilling out there?’
‘Hell yeah,’ Bear answered in a monotone.
‘You don’t sound that enthusiastic.’ Broker laughed.
‘Man, everything is so perfect here. Perfect blue sky, perfect beaches, perfect teeth, bodies, hell, Broker, I’m perfectly bored. Get me out of here. Do you have a job for us?’
‘Nada.’ Broker was still chuckling. ‘Where’s Chloe?’
‘Oh, she’s gone on a perfect run!’
Broker burst out laughing. ‘Bear, you need to relax, maybe go for some yoga, discover your inner chakra or some shit like that. It’s a fucking holiday for the two of you!’
‘I need to do all that like I need a hole in my head.’ Bear snorted. ‘This holiday has outstayed its welcome.’ He sighed deeply. ‘Anyway, why did you call, Broker?’
‘How many feet could Chloe and you round up for some surveillance?’
‘How many do you need? Maybe ten, fifteen good guys. Really good.’
Broker shook his head, not that Bear could see. ‘I might need much more than that. Maybe fifty or seventy.’
‘Jeez, Broker, how many bodies you want followed? Sounds like a whole army! What’s this about? Something Chloe and I can help you with?’
‘Maybe, but not yet. Things haven’t yet fallen into place or heated up. Do me a favor. Start warming up as many feet as you can but also manage expectations. This is not the first line of approach for me, and it might not go anywhere. All I want to know is if I need feet, I can get them.’
‘Will do, Broker. Stay safe and stay cool.’
Broker hung up and checked his mail. There was an encrypted memory stick from Isakson, which had several files on it, reams of data on the investigation Isakson had conducted, files and notes of agents he had put on the scanner, and details of the various operations that had gone south.
Broker studied the files for hours, and when it turned dark, he closed the folder, leaned back and stretched. This wasn’t the approach he would take. Repeating the investigation Isakson had conducted would be pointless.
He would attack this problem from the other end. It was time he put his own badasses to work.
Chapter 13
Two thousand five hundred miles away, Roger sighed and looked up at the night sky barely visible through the thick blanket of the forest.
They had made their way from Copper Canyon in Chihuahua, Mexico, northward and crossed the border a while back and then drifted toward Coronado National Forest in southeastern Arizona, not far from the Mexican border and Nogales, Sonora, in Mexico. They had spent several days here, drifting through the vast forest that covered more than a million and a half acres, soaking in the solitude and wilderness… and fishing.
This was the life – fat fish lining his belly, a comfortable sleeping bag, the vast emptiness of the forest surrounding him, silence echoing around him… A clanking behind him disturbed his thoughts, and he twisted around to see the source.
A tall, sinewy black man was washing up after their dinner, his body language expressing disgust. Bwana glanced at Roger. ‘Hey, Rog, you know this is called camping. When two guys go camping, they share stuff. Stuff like work. It’s called distribution of work. I thought you, having gone to college, would know all about this.’ He banged a saucepan and plate together to make his point.
‘Hold on right there, buddy,’ Roger drawled, rubbing a palm through his close-cropped brown hair as he adjusted his lean and muscled frame on the sleeping bag. He twisted on his side, propping himself on an elbow. ‘I thought we agreed on alternating the work. Me doing the fishing in the morning, you cooking and cleaning in the evening, and the next day we alternate. It’s called rotation. I studied that in high school football, not in college. I’m sure you had some schooling, didn’t ya?’
‘Rotation is fine when the chores are evenly distributed, but they aren’t. You eat like a hog, actually you eat like three prize hogs celebrating their birthday, and I end up doing more work.’
‘I can’t help it. I’m a growing boy; I need all the nourishment I can get. Besides it’s your fault, you cook so damned well.’ Roger laughed.
Bwana glared at him and then chuckled. He finished drying, tidied the campsite, laid out his bag on the other side of the bank of glowing coals, and settled down.
Silence crept over them, both of them perfectly comfortable in the silence, perfectly comfortable in the dark.
Bwana Kayembe was born to a Congolese father, a school teacher, and an American mother, an aid worker with an international charity, in Luvungi, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. His earliest memories were of the lush green canopy of forest just a stone’s throw away from the huts in the village, and of the towering hills weeping rain as they overlooked the village.
Robert Kayembe, his father, a forward-thinking man, had witnessed the birth of an independent Congo after years of Belgian rule, but independence did not bring stability or peace to the country. The country was in a state of constant strife, with tribal rivalries and ever-present rebels resulting in the land going through two presidents by the time Bwana was born.
Robert migrated to Shelby County, Tennessee, along with his wife and four-year-old Bwana, having decided that the intelligent and inquisitive child deserved all the opportunity he could get.
Bwana grew up with a long gun on his arm in their farm in Arlington, hearing stories of faraway lands and different people, and this fueled a desire in him to see what lay beyond the horizon.
The Army ROTC course at the University of Tennessee set off a chain of events that eventually led to his joining the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) and driving with four others in a Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle (MRAP) through the valleys and mountains of Eastern Afghanistan one wintry morning.
The MRAP was designed to deflect and nullify the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that the insurgents used, and numerous soldiers owed their lives to it, but it lacked maneuverability and was like a drunken boxer when driving in rocky, mountainous terrain in ’Stan.
The valley was full of mines, and the vehicle had to stick to a well-rutted path, but the steep turns and bends resulted in such slow going that Bwana jumped off the vehicle and guided it around bends, fully knowing there were snipers about.
The first few turns were navigated safely, and then came the fourth turn, a particularly steep one, and as Bwana rounded the bend, he came across the goats. His attention was half focused on the width of the road, and he was calculating angles and distances for the vehicle grinding beh
ind him when he stopped short on seeing them.
Goats. There were about thirty of them, a hundred yards away, some of them lying down, some feeding on the grass off the mountainside, doing all the things that goats did, with not a care in the world. Bwana backed up slowly, alert for an ambush, scanned for a goatherd, and found none. He could hear the engine’s revs dropping as they slowed for his return, and he waited, his M-4 coming to his hand as naturally as he drew breath.
He risked a quick glance around him as he heard a shout from the MRAP, calling out for him; he was alone, just him and the goats, the vehicle and its occupants a few yards around the corner, a galaxy away.
He opened his mouth to respond, and the first shot rang out from ahead on the slope of the mountain, missing him by several feet, the sniper not taking his time. Seven, no, eight men rose from amidst the goats and trained their guns on him and opened fire.
Bwana had already dropped to the ground, roaring, ‘Ambush,’ the stock coming smoothly to his cheek, his first shot taking the man on the left.
He started crawling back urgently, seeking shelter behind the turn, firing in short bursts, making them duck behind the animals, and then one of them raised his upper body, clutching something in his hand. Grenade. Goodbye, Bwana. It was a good ride while it lasted.
The man’s head exploded in a red mist, the flat bark from behind coming to him simultaneously, and then a louder, larger noise, the I-6 diesel of the MRAP drowning them all out and rifles opening up at once, taking out all the ambushers now exposed by the scattering goats.
The cluster of rocks ahead – the sniper’s hide – exploded, clouds of mud, blood, and stone rising in the air, shimmering in the thin sunlight before dissipating slowly as the echoes of the guns died.
Silence crept up on them, broken by the bleating of the wounded animals, their cries cut short by single shots as Roger moved grimly among them, ending the misery of those wounded beyond help. He was flanked by two others, checking and confirming that the ambushers were all dead.
Bwana still lay prone, his M-4 trained on the sniper hide till he felt a hand clasping his shoulder.
Roger smiled down at him. ‘Don’t go to sleep down there, partner. The day’s still ahead of us.’ He rose, offering a hand to Bwana, helping him rise to his feet, that clasp of hands unbroken to this day.
Bwana looked at the dark shadow that was Roger on the other side of the coals. Roger never spoke about himself. Bwana knew he was an orphan and had grown up with a foster family who couldn’t wait to see the back of him, and had no one else to call family.
That was enough backstory for Bwana. The past didn’t matter, the now and the future did. Family? He was Roger’s family.
Roger didn’t know what woke him, but one moment he was in a deep, dreamless sleep and the next he was awake. He lay still, allowing the night and forest to envelop him. He turned his head towards Bwana and saw the dark shapeless shadow of his bag. He glanced at the dull green numerals on his watch. Two a.m. He lay still, listening, trying to sense what had woken him.
It wasn’t any sound, he decided, nor was it any presence.
‘Yeah, I can feel it too,’ murmured Bwana from the other side of the banked coals.
Roger grinned soundlessly and got up from his bag, Bwana doing the same; two wraiths rising, the still air bending itself around them – habits nurtured in the Special Forces, practiced in far-off dusty lands and now like breathing to them.
The woods had gone silent; the customary sounds of the nightlife deadened – that had woken Roger and Bwana.
Their camp was north of Pena Blanca Lake, in Peck Canyon, and was located in a thicket, caution and the habit of blending in guiding their choice of camp. They were right in the middle of Peck Canyon Corridor, a route for herding illegal immigrants from Mexico to the United States; the Corridor stretched from border crossing points, across the Pajarito Mountains, Atascosa Mountains, and the Tumacacori Mountains… Peck Canyon divided the Atascosas from the Tumacacoris.
The border between the United States and Mexico, about two thousand miles, had steel and concrete fences at places and infrared cameras and sensors at others, supported by about twenty thousand US Border Patrol agents and drones in the air.
This still didn’t deter the flow of illegal immigrants. About half a million of them crossed into the United States each year, many of them guided by coyotes – smugglers who were often armed – who shepherded the illegal immigrants across the border for a fee. Many criminal gangs organized and controlled the flow of illegal immigrants across the border, and most of the coyotes worked for some gang or the other. What the physical and the virtual fence had done was move the flow of immigrants to remote, inhospitable terrain such as Peck Canyon Corridor.
Roger and Bwana were fully aware of the immigrant traffic in the region but hadn’t encountered any during their camping.
Roger crossed to his kit and buckled his Kimber Target II in his shoulder holster, slipping extra mags in his pockets. He strapped a Benchmade to his ankle, slung a pair of night-vision goggles around his neck and stuck a comms set in his ear. He looked across at Bwana, and he was tooling up similarly; Bwana was a Glock man, a Glock 21 tucked away in his shoulder holster, and as Roger looked on, he slung a Heckler and Koch MP7A1 compact submachine gun over his bag. Bwana didn’t believe in doing things by halves.
They looked around, and Bwana pointed to a very faint glow in the skyline about a mile back and headed off at a rapid pace, Roger following. The silence grew louder as they approached, and then as they slowed, they heard it.
It was the shuffling of a large body of people moving stealthily in the night.
Bwana glanced at Roger and quickened his pace, making as much noise as a shadow. He slowed down and faded into the bole of a tree, Roger finding another large trunk to shelter behind – they were two hundred feet away from the human mass.
The dim lighting they had spotted was caused by high-intensity flashlights held by six guards, who were in a rough U-formation around forty people. The bright beams were carefully turned away from the mass of people, and Roger couldn’t make out the details. He looked at Bwana, who shook his head. Coyotes, he thought. There goes our sleep, just our fucking dumb luck.
They let the group get a lead and tracked back to scan for a rear guard – there was none.
‘Illegals crossing the border,’ murmured Bwana. ‘Thing is, do we let them go or do we play the heroes?’
‘Let’s warn the Border Patrol,’ replied Roger, and they slowed down further, and Roger powered up his phone. ‘Shit, hardly any bars on this. How about yours?’
Bwana checked his phone and shook his head. Roger dialed a number and held it to his head and then gave up after a while. ‘No ring going out.’
He fished out the sat phone they used to communicate securely with Broker and Bear, and shook his head disgustedly when he saw they’d forgotten to charge it.
They followed the group for over a mile and noticed two other coyotes in the front who were acting as scouts. All the coyotes were heavily armed, and even in the darkness, through the distance, they could see the dim outlines of AK-47s and AR-15s on the three closest to them.
‘Is that standard wear for coyotes?’ muttered Bwana.
Roger shrugged; the weapons didn’t bother him. ‘How long are we going to follow them?’
‘You got anything better to do? Other than sleeping?’
Roger shook his head silently, and they pressed on. It was dark and cloudy, but the light reflecting off the walls of the canyon gave them enough visibility to follow. They weren’t able to make out the details of the group from behind, but noticed that they were of average height and some of them were female, from the long hair. The coyotes took care not to direct the light on the group as they hustled the group along at a rapid pace. They prodded the slow ones with their rifles or slaps and muttered curses. One slap felled an illegal to the ground, and the coyote grabbed an arm, dragged him upright, and slapped him aga
in to prod him on.
Roger tightened inside and drifted closer to the group, a hundred and fifty feet separating him from them.
The group turned around a large rock outcrop that narrowed the track, and they lost sight of the mass momentarily. They slowed down their pursuit… it was a good place for an ambush. Roger tried his phone again and after a while put it back in his pocket in disgust. Bwana crept forward, hugging the far end of the ravine, and peeked beyond the outcrop. After a while, he made a hand signal, and they surged forward.
The main body of people was flagging – they had probably been on the move all night, and the heat and the pace was telling on them. The coyotes were growing increasingly angry, and the frequent sounds of slaps and curses punctuated the air. Bwana looked across at Roger expressionlessly. He would have the same expressionless face if he was breaking the arms of the coyotes.
Roger looked at the group, looked back at the trail, and what had been gnawing away at him became stronger. He came to a halt and dug into another pocket and drew out a military compass and checked his bearings. He pictured their location in his mind and placed the compass on it and then zoomed in and out on his mental map.
He frowned, looked up to signal Bwana.
Three shots rang out.
Chapter 14
There was a haze of dust in the air, further dulling the visibility. But the aftermath of the shots was clear, even from their distance in the dark.
Two illegals lay on the ground; a couple of others hunched over them.
The coyotes were loosely strung out and were threatening the group of illegals with their guns. All eight of them. The rest of the illegals were huddled together, cowed.
Roger couldn’t make out the expressions on their faces, the darkness and distance rendering the faces into pale blobs, but none of them were showing any signs of aggression. Roger and Bwana hugged the rocky outcrop, invisible against its dark shadow beyond the dim light of the flashlights.
