Stealth Retribution

by Vikki Kestell

  I used them well, but I wanted my own—and I felt it prudent to “re-arm” myself. Even with the power of the nanocloud active within me, I felt the loss of my escrima sticks. I’d grown dependent upon their comforting weight in my hands or in the quiver along my spine.

  “Nano. Reorder a pair of kamagong wood sticks. No; just in case I need them, order three pair. And another quiver. Use expedited shipping.”

  Done, Gemma Keyes.

  “Cool. Thank you, Nano.”

  ***

  Emilio listened to the wind howl. It sounded far away, but that was because he was in a basement. Emilio hadn’t been in many basements; Albuquerque didn’t have lots of houses with basements—but this place had one. Maybe it wasn’t a house. It didn’t have the “feel” of a house. And he sensed that he was in a solitary place, far from people and traffic.

  He had no idea where that might be, because his captors had put a big bag over him and had carried him from the car into the building. All he knew was that he was surrounded by rough concrete walls and that the walls had no windows. Except for the dim light coming from the crack under the door, his cell was very dark.

  He shivered, turned over on the mattress, and snugged the sleeping bag around his shoulders. The bag was cold and funny-smelling, like something wet that never really dried out all the way. The mattress never really warmed up, either, because it lay on the cement floor and the floor was freezing cold. Emilio shivered again.

  He heard Dead Eyes cursing down the hall. Someone answered him. Emilio couldn’t make out what the guy said, but it wasn’t what Soto wanted to hear. Emilio ducked his head down in the dank bag and covered his ears. He could still hear Dead Eyes screaming. Something about a doctor.

  Emilio had heard lots of yelling since they brought him here. He’d figured out that Soto’s arm or hand was messed up. Even though he kept his hand bandaged up, Soto needed a special kind of doctor to fix it—the kind of doctor who fixed badly broken bones—and his men weren’t having much luck getting one for him.

  A little smile twitched Emilio’s mouth. She got you good, didn’t she? Serves you right.

  Dead Eyes was in a lot of pain from his busted hand, too—and that made him short-tempered. Twitchy. Upset all the time. And when Soto got upset, he got crazy—like how Mateo would get just before he punched a wall or hit Corazón. Dead Eyes was especially mad because he had taken a picture of Emilio and put it in the newspaper, and Gemma hadn’t found it yet. With every day that went by without her finding it, Soto got angrier and crazier.

  Emilio used his toes to snag and pull the chilly bottom of the sleeping bag up and bunch it around his feet. Eventually, the bag would get a little warmer, and he would sleep. But before he slept he would think about Gemma and what she would do to Dead Eyes when she came to get him.

  Soto thought he could use Emilio to get Gemma and hurt her, but Emilio knew better. She was too smart for Dead Eyes. Well, Soto would find that out for himself, wouldn’t he?

  Then she will take me back to the old man and we will all have spaghetti together: Abe, Zander, Gemma, and me.

  Emilio thought about the nice bed that would be his when he got to live with Abe all the time. Abe would take care of him, and Zander and Gemma would help.

  Soon, he told himself. Soon.

  ~~**~~

  Chapter 13

  Gamble was in the office early Saturday morning. He kept himself busy while he waited for his teams to report in, but he couldn’t shake the premonition that something was wrong, that circumstances bigger than he could control or manage were at work.

  He didn’t like the feeling.

  When his phone rang shortly after noon, he grabbed it up on its second ring. “Ross Gamble.”

  “Special Agent Gamble, this is Agent Rains. I’m calling from Las Cruces.”

  The caution in the woman’s voice set Gamble’s teeth on edge. “What is it, Rains?”

  “Sir, we rendezvoused with our White Sands counterparts last night and they provided exterior lighting as we requested; however, when we arrived at the specified location to secure the scene? Sir, I’m sorry to tell you . . . there was nothing there.”

  Gamble could hardly speak through his clenched jaws. “Explain, please.”

  “Our team and the Army squad spent an hour walking the property, about an acre in size. We saw evidence of earth-moving equipment and a large excavation, as recently as earlier in the day or perhaps the day before. Based on the size and type of the equipment tread marks, we deduced that the house had been bulldozed. Leveled, sir. We’re fairly certain that they—persons unknown—knocked down the house, dug a hole, pushed the demolished remains of the house into the excavated hole, and covered it over.”

  Gamble cursed under his breath. “What else? Outbuildings? Signs of recent activity?”

  “It was apparent that the property recently had a perimeter fence, and we made out the footprint of a concrete driveway that led from the dirt road to where the house—presumably—sat. Every bit of the fence and concrete driveway was removed and, we presume, buried with the rubble from the house.”

  “And what do our White Sands connections have to say?”

  “Our counterparts are as flummoxed as we are. The house was an old cinderblock officers’ residence from back in the 1950s, unoccupied for decades. They had no idea anyone was using it.”

  She paused. “There’s more, sir, and it’s bad.”

  Gamble pulled himself together. “Give it to me.”

  “I sent two agents back to the site of the house first thing this morning to see if we missed any evidence in the dark. While they did that, Agent Crowder and I came into Las Cruces to interview Colonel Greaves.”

  “Yes?”

  “Agent Gamble, Colonel Greaves passed away last night.”

  “He’s dead?” The news stunned Gamble—and sent his thoughts down a terrible path.

  “Yes, sir. He had been hospitalized after sustaining multiple broken bones in his hands, arms, and legs last Sunday night. But, and here’s the curious bit: According to his medical record, no one knew how he’d been injured—and Colonel Greaves wasn’t saying. He underwent extensive surgery to set and pin the worst of his breaks and was expected to make a full recovery.”

  “Right—but now he’s dead.”

  “Yes, sir. His physician suggests that Greaves suffered either a blood clot from his injuries or the rupture of a previously undiagnosed aneurysm. We’ll know more after the autopsy.”

  I doubt it, Gamble snarled to himself. “What of the guards? Dr. Bickel said the house had a staff of guards that rotated shifts—we estimate between fifteen and twenty.”

  “We’ve been on that since we left the hospital. The guards weren’t military, we know that much. From what we can surmise, Cushing hired a contractor to supply the guards—and there we’ve hit a brick wall. We have the contracting company’s name, but the organization has disappeared. Closed up shop—although whether the company ever legally existed is in question. We found no articles of incorporation, no bank accounts, no website, and no physical address. Furthermore, the IRS has no tax documents or records for a company of that name. Thus, we have no names or employment records for the guards and no means of tracking them down.”

  “Better and better.” Gamble’s brows drew down into a hard line. “And what of Colonel Greaves’ aide? He accompanied Greaves when Dr. Bickel escaped.”

  The agent’s detached tone wafting over the line portended more bad news. “Sir, the corporal was struck yesterday afternoon by a hit-and-run driver while he was crossing a street. In the crosswalk. Broad daylight. DOA.”

  Gamble sighed. “Mighty convenient, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, sir. Too convenient.”

  She paused, as if she had more to add, and Gamble goaded her on. “What are you thinking, Rains?”

  “I’m thinking, sir, that Dr. Bickel escaped late Sunday night and surfaced in Albuquerque on Thursday. Today is Saturday, and yet all eviden
ce of Dr. Bickel’s incarceration has vanished—more accurately, has been expunged. Professionally ‘cleaned’ in less than forty-eight hours of Dr. Bickel’s reemergence into the public eye.

  Gamble said nothing, but he agreed in thought, Oh, it was professional, all right.

  “Someone went to great lengths to discredit Dr. Bickel’s testimony or, at the very least, leave him with no leg to stand on, no proof of what might be labeled a tall tale, a fantasy. Sir, whoever coordinated all this? Had to have been someone with clout and resources. Someone or ones at a very high level.”

  That disquieting premonition that the circumstances were bigger than he could control or manage stole over Gamble again. “I concur, Agent Rains.”

  As he returned the receiver to the phone, he wondered what surprises awaited his Georgia team.

  ***

  Like Gamble, Janice Trujillo tried to ignore the unease keeping her up nights, but it refused to be disregarded. Too many details were adding up, and she didn’t like what the sum pointed to.

  “What are these, Miss Trujillo?” Cushing was looking over a small number of items Trujillo had retrieved from the facility on the missile range before she oversaw its demolition and burial.

  “I’ve been told that these, General, are escrima sticks. They’re used in martial arts fighting.”

  Cushing picked one up, hefted the weight, and frowned. “They are quite heavy.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Made from a Filipino hardwood tree, Diospyros blancoi, whose lumber is called kamagong or, alternatively, “iron wood.” The sticks can be lethal when wielded by an expert.”

  “And they were found in the house?”

  “We interviewed Colonel Greaves’ aide yesterday morning.” She referred to her notes. “He said, and I quote, ‘A blow from an invisible force sent my sidearm into the air. Whatever it was, it hit me three more times. When I awoke, I was in the hospital with two cracked elbows and a mild concussion.’”

  “An invisible force.”

  The way Cushing breathed those three words bothered Trujillo. Cushing’s thousand-foot stare made her look as though she were trying to see something just out of her view, just out of reach.

  And then the general whispered, “If I could only remember.”

  More alarms rang in Trujillo’s head. “Ma’am?”

  Cushing straightened; her gaze snapped back. “And Colonel Greaves? What did he tell you?”

  “The Colonel refused to speak to us, General. He said he would only speak to you.”

  “Indeed? That is . . . regrettable.”

  Curious. Cushing didn’t seem too upset about Greaves’ reluctance to talk.

  “General, I’ve received news that Colonel Greaves passed away last night.”

  Cushing didn’t react. She continued to study the heavy wooden stick.

  “General?”

  “I heard you, Miss Trujillo.”

  Trujillo’s senses were jangling. “And Colonel Greaves’ aide was hit by a car yesterday afternoon not long after we interviewed him.”

  Cushing cleared her throat. “I see.”

  Trujillo thought she saw, too, and a cold chill washed over her. She kept her mouth closed until Cushing spoke again.

  “Miss Trujillo.”

  “Yes, General?”

  “I want you to trace these sticks. What do you call them again?”

  “Escrima sticks, ma’am.”

  “Trace them. The market share for this product would be specific and limited, yes? Not a large population, I should think. Even a smaller number buying a particular brand such as this one.” Cushing pointed to a tiny trademark stamped on the stick’s blunt end. “And even fewer of this brand sold to parties in New Mexico.”

  She straightened. “Find out who in New Mexico bought these sticks, Miss Trujillo—and make this your only priority. I want to know who bought these, and I want to know now.”

  ***

  Gemma Keyes, we have further researched Arnaldo Soto’s family and have uncovered pertinent information.

  “Oh? Tell me.”

  The nanomites showed me three email accounts. Traffic between the three accounts was frequent, lengthy, and often dealt with Dead Eyes. When the emails weren’t about Arnaldo Soto, they were about business problems.

  “What is the relationship between these people and Soto?”

  Estevan Soto is Arnaldo Soto’s older brother. Miguel Soto is Arnaldo Soto’s uncle, his father’s brother. Esperanza Duvall is Arnaldo Soto’s married sister, also older than Arnaldo. Esperanza Duvall is married to an American.

  I scanned the email exchanges, frowned, and read more thoroughly, committing them to memory. If the messages and what they led me to deduce were true, then the three aforementioned Sotos comprised the bulk of power within the family—a large clan whose “family business” was a significant segment of a major Mexican drug cartel.

  And Arnaldo’s family was not pleased with him.

  “Nano, recap what else you’ve learned about this family. Break it down for me.” I wanted them to confirm my assumptions and fill in any blanks I might have.

  As the nanomites recited bits of the information they had gleaned via their forays across the Internet, they pulled up images of Soto’s family members: his uncle, Miguel; Soto’s brother, Estevan; and sister, Esperanza.

  Gemma Keyes, Dead Eyes’ uncle, Miguel Soto, has been running the majority of the family’s criminal operations for the past seven years, since the death of his brother, Ignacio. His health has declined, however, so he has been grooming his niece and nephew to assume the leadership of the family and their segment of the cartel.

  “How do you know Miguel Soto’s health has declined?” This was the kind of information I figured I might be missing.

  Miguel Soto’s medical records appeared. I perused them and found what the nanomites had alluded to: kidney failure requiring dialysis three times weekly. I read on and learned that, for the past six months, the effectiveness of the dialysis treatments had diminished. Without a transplant, Miguel Soto’s prognosis was one year—two at the most—with decreasing health and mobility as his death drew near.

  In addition, Gemma Keyes, we mined email correspondence between Miguel and his physician. Because Miguel has a rare tissue type, procuring a viable kidney donor for him has proven difficult. Two years ago, they had located a reasonable match and had scheduled the transplant. Ten days prior to the surgery, the donor was found to have contracted HIV, a recent infection. For that reason, the surgery was canceled.

  “What about family? Aren’t family members presumed to be the best possible match for an organ transplant?” And in what way is any of this pertinent to Dead Eyes? I wondered.

  Yes; a family member should have yielded the best match. But of all potential family donors, all but one were ruled out.

  And there it was.

  “All but one?”

  Yes, Gemma Keyes. Arnaldo Soto was the only familial match.

  Some of the animus toward Dead Eyes expressed in the email exchanges began to make sense.

  “Why . . . why didn’t the transplant take place?”

  Arnaldo Soto demanded that he be given a prominent position in the family in exchange for a kidney.

  “And?”

  His family expressed misgivings regarding his fitness as a leader. Arnaldo has a long history of troubling behavior: schoolyard bullying and animal cruelty as a juvenile, the brutal treatment of prostitutes while at university, and increasing numbers of angry and violent tendencies.

  I snorted. “Let me get this straight: The heads of an amoral criminal family were concerned about the mental and emotional stability of a family scion? Cute. So, I take it the uncle and siblings didn’t give in to Arnaldo’s demands?”

  Not initially. By way of a trial foray, they gave Arnaldo a minor role under a seasoned lieutenant, a longtime, trusted family employee. Soto balked at taking orders from a paid family underling and subverted the man’s authority. He gathered likeminded
foot soldiers who were loyal to him and led an uprising against his superior, thinking to wrest his position from him and assume control. The rebellion was bloody but unsuccessful.

  If Soto had been anyone else, his supervisor would have executed him on the spot—as he did every gang member who had followed Soto. Instead, the lieutenant felt compelled to send Soto home in disgrace and report him to Miguel in the strongest of negative terms.

  Miguel confined Arnaldo to the family hacienda under guard. However, because the uncle was desperate for his nephew’s kidney, he gave Dead Eyes one last opportunity: He sent him to Albuquerque to assess a gang-related incident. A local problem.

  “Oh.”

  The “gang-related incident”? It was me: I had caused that “local problem.” I was the one who’d seen Mateo beating his girlfriend and had clobbered him with a chair. I was the one who’d incited Corazón to take the drug money sitting on the table and leave. I told her to steal Mateo’s car.

  Soto was to assess the situation, make necessary adjustments, and return to Mexico for the transplant.

  “Soto cleaned up Mateo’s mess all right, but he didn’t go back. He got rid of Mateo instead.”

  That is correct, Gemma Keyes. Dead Eyes has remained in Albuquerque and refused all commands to return to Mexico. Over the next weeks that followed, the email chains between uncle, brother, and sister outlined Arnaldo’s other treasonous deeds—including Soto’s hijacking of the cartel’s drug supply and distribution operation in New Mexico in order to establish his own fiefdom. However, Dead Eyes’ most egregious act of defiance was his refusal to return and donate his kidney to his uncle.

  Arnaldo was beyond family forgiveness.

  “Nano, why did you bring all this up?”

  I was reasonably certain of the answer, but if I were right, their plan was scary in its audacity.

  Gemma Keyes, Estevan Soto and his sister, Esperanza Duvall, have placed a bounty upon Arnaldo’s head.

  “As in ‘Wanted, Dead or Alive’?”

  No, Gemma Keyes. Arnaldo Soto is wanted, but he is very much wanted alive.