A nurse emerged from the medical offices and called Dinah’s name. She rose and dutifully followed her through the crowded waiting area back to the doctor’s exam room.
Five more agonizing minutes went by, and then the doctor entered, several pages of test results clutched in his hand. He looked around the room, spotted a pen, walked over to it and made a notation, and then pulled up a stool and sat across from Dinah.
She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. “Doctor – what is it?”
“Your results show you’re healthy as a horse, Dinah. White count fine, red good, everything within normal parameters.”
“Then why do I feel so out of sorts?” she demanded, all the frustration of the long wait mingling with the relief that nothing material was wrong with her.
“You feel that way because you’re pregnant, Dinah.” He held up the test results. “My hunch is about seven weeks. Did you miss a period?”
“What? Pregnant?” She processed the question. “Sometimes I’m irregular. I have been my entire life. I didn’t think anything…” Dinah locked eyes with him. “Are you a hundred percent sure?”
The doctor smiled for the first time. “It’s hard to be just a little pregnant, Dinah. You either are or you aren’t. The blood test is reliable. Sometimes the urine tests aren’t, especially the home versions, but the blood test doesn’t lie.” He nodded. “Congratulations. This is your first, correct?”
“Yes,” she answered numbly.
“I’ll make an appointment for you with one of my colleagues – the best ob-gyn in Mexico City, if you don’t have a preference for your own.”
“Oh, mine’s pretty good, but if yours is better…”
“She’s considered the top pick in town, Dinah. It’s who my wife sees.”
Two minutes of small talk and several stammered questions later, Dinah found herself standing outside in the waiting room with a slip of paper in her hand. She looked up as an older woman accompanied by two security guards, their expressions serious, came through the door and demanded everyone’s attention. The patients quieted and the stern woman scanned the room.
“We have a breaking emergency in the hospital. I’m afraid nobody can leave – police orders. That’s all I know right now, and I ask for everyone’s patience and cooperation in a difficult situation. If anyone needs care urgently, you’ll be prioritized.” The woman paused. “No cell use, either. They’ve apparently shut down the towers.” She looked around the waiting area with a glare that could have peeled paint. “I’ll return when I have more information. Are there any questions?”
The room exploded into bedlam as fifty people all clamored to be heard. It took fifteen minutes of the woman reassuring everyone that everything was for their own safety, as well as reiterating that the exits were barred by the police and the military, to quiet the crowd. Dinah finally got to ask the question that had been burning in her throat. “Is there something contagious they’re trying to quarantine?”
She hated even voicing the possibility, but this was a hospital, and not allowing anyone to leave was beyond draconian.
The woman shook her head. “Not that I know of. But I would definitely stay in this area. We haven’t been told enough to be completely sure, but I didn’t get that impression. And I believe I would have been told. This seems more like something criminal or a security threat. Maybe they’re looking for someone in the facility. Again, I’m sorry,” she said, holding up her hands at a new round of shouted questions. “I have to go see other floors. These two gentlemen will be guarding the doors to ensure you aren’t disturbed. Thanks for your cooperation.”
“Then we’re prisoners?” Dinah exclaimed.
“Not any more than I am,” the woman countered. “I’m not allowed to leave either. Please. Let me do my job. I promise I’ll be back as soon as I have more information.”
“You come in here, announce the building’s locked down and we’re all forbidden to leave, and we’re supposed to just smile and thank you?” Dinah countered, biting back an insult at the last second.
“Señora, I’m afraid none of us has any choice, so whether you like it or not doesn’t change anything. Now I have a difficult job to do, and several hundred more patients to break the news to, so you’ll have to excuse me. I’m not the one who’s keeping you here – it’s the police and the army. If you have a problem with that, take it up with them.”
“And how am I supposed to do that with my cell not working?” Dinah spun and faced the reception desk. “Can I make a call on a landline?”
The woman’s veneer cracked and for an instant her humanity leaked through the severe façade. She obviously hadn’t received instructions on whether or not to allow patients to use the hospital phones.
“I…I need to check.”
“That’s not going to wash. My husband is the head of one of the city’s Federal Police task forces. I want to call him. Right now. He needs to know what’s going on.”
The woman’s countenance hardened. “I said I’d check. That’s the best I can do.”
“And I’m saying that’s not good enough.” Dinah’s voice softened. “Look. I just found out I’m pregnant. My husband doesn’t know. Give me a break here. I want to tell him. Please.”
“I can’t. But I’ll be back shortly with an answer.”
“By what legal authority do you deny me the right to communicate with my husband?” Dinah asked. “That’s kidnapping. I haven’t done anything wrong. I’ve committed no crime.”
“Look, lady, I sympathize, but I’m not a lawyer. I said I’d ask, and I will. But you don’t have a right to use hospital phones. Let’s just get very clear on that, all right? We own those, not you, so just settle down, be patient, and I’ll be back.”
Dinah shook her head. “What kind of automaton are you? By what right do you keep us locked up like criminals?”
“It’s not me. I’m just following orders.”
The nameless woman turned and marched out the door, leaving the stunned room to stare down the guards, who responded to the frightened and outraged looks by fingering their batons nervously, clearly as unsure of their role in the unfolding drama as anyone.
Dinah and three other women pushed to the picture window at the far end of the waiting room and peered down at the street, where fire trucks, army personnel carriers, and police vehicles blocked the boulevard as emergency workers set up barricades. A shadow drifted across their faces and they looked up to see a military helicopter hovering nearby, and further away, a brightly painted network helo keeping a safe distance.
The woman next to Dinah shook her head as she took in the spectacle. “What the hell is going on? They’ve closed the whole street…”
Dinah moved back from the window as a trickle of sweat worked its way down her spine. Whatever it was, she needed to remain calm and not become overwrought.
Because now it was about more than her.
She had a life inside of her.
A baby. Unexpected, but not unwelcome.
Which gave her pause. She wasn’t sure how she felt in the wake of everything that had happened, but her overwhelming emotion was joy at the idea that she was going to be a mother. But what about Cruz? She’d come to grips with the idea that he was married to the job – his career, “the other woman” in their shared existence – but how would he react to the fact that he was about to become a father for the second time in his life?
She knew his history, the atrocities that had been committed to his family.
Could he put that behind him and look to the future?
Would he be happy or shocked?
Dinah felt her phone in her pocket and choked back the frustration she felt at not being able to tell him the news. It wasn’t fair. The biggest thing to happen in their relationship, and she was muzzled by circumstance.
She took several deep breaths and stared out at the street again.
Whatever was going on, it wasn’t good. She’d spent enough time around her husband
to know that when the entire apparatus mobilized, it had to be big. And big, in law enforcement terms, was never, ever a positive.
Chapter 26
Static buzzed in Briones’s earbud as he peered around the rear of the undercover van, eyeing the building where the delivery of the underage girls destined for short lives of drug-addicted prostitution was to occur at any moment. So far there were only a few vehicles parked at the curb, which a run of the license plates had told him belonged to anonymous corporations – no doubt fronts through which the cartel laundered money and bought assets.
He’d long ago understood that when the scale of illegal revenues was so large that it dwarfed many other aspects of the legitimate economy, many seemingly honest businesses would be tainted by the dirty money, especially in Mexico, where the cartels had been earning hundreds of billions of dollars for decades. He grasped that just about any investigation of apparently legit enterprises would sooner or later reveal a cartel connection, just as they would in the U.S., which shared its neighbor to the south’s plethora of hotels that thrived even when there were never any guests, automobile dealerships that never seemed to sell cars, and real estate developers who always had ready access to cash even in the most doubtful of environments.
It was just the way of the world, and he’d have had to been blind not to see it.
Of course, the entire bureaucracy was devoted to not spotting what was plainly before its eyes, and there was no man so blind as one whose self-interest depended upon a lack of vision. The intersection of politics and organized crime was so obvious that it was assumed in any election that all the candidates were in the pockets of one cartel or another. Mexicans were pragmatic about human weakness and failings, and in a nation where two-thirds lived in abject poverty, it was naïve to believe that those fortunate enough to get rich by being able to run for office weren’t doing so in order to advance the interests of the criminal elite who operated the country for their enrichment.
If Briones had been predisposed to alcoholism, the reality of his job and its ultimate futility would have been more than enough pretense for him to drown himself in the bottle. The only thing that kept him from doing so was the knowledge that his actions did matter to the victims he saved – and today, he was the defender of children destined for unimaginable degradation at the hands of human animals.
The drop-off location was an industrial building next door to a strip club, and their informer had told them that interested patrons of the latter establishment, once vetted as discreet, could take a locked passage between the two structures to where the children were kept. The thought made Briones’s skin crawl, but he forced himself to remain calm – allowing his fury at the wanton destruction of young lives to dominate his thoughts would do nobody any good. He needed to stay impartial and dispassionate until the operation was over. As hard a part of the job as any, but a necessary one.
His earbud crackled and a voice spoke over the comm channel. “Truck just rounded the corner. Should be on your street within fifteen seconds.”
Briones nodded and tapped his microphone active. “They’re here. Let’s do this by the book. No shooting unless fired upon, exactly as discussed.”
“Roger that.”
The laboring sound of a diesel engine reached him just before a senile split-axle bobtail truck with a faded red moving company logo lumbered around the corner and headed his way. Briones ducked back, out of sight, and waited until the squeal of brakes told him the truck was pulling to a stop in front of the building. He waited as the motor idled, and then heard voices. The driver shut the engine off just as Briones peeked back around the side of the van in time to see a group of figures emerge from the doorway and move to the truck’s cargo door.
Another voice, that of a sniper on an adjacent roof, came over the comm line. “I make eight people, five with assault rifles.”
Briones answered, “I see them. Target the guy in the red hoodie. He looks the most capable.”
“Got him.”
Briones watched as two of the figures reached up and unlatched the door. It slid up and disappeared, and the two climbed into the truck and dropped a loading ramp before sliding a stack of cartons out of the way. Briones saw a false wall with another door halfway down the truck’s length, and waited as the driver climbed aboard and moved to it with a key in his hand. He unlocked the padlock and flung the door wide, and Briones’s eyes narrowed at the sight of the first of the unfortunates emerging from the pitch black, her clothes soaked through with sweat from the long trip in what was apparently an unventilated compartment.
“I have a child sighted. Let’s move in. Remember, only engage if there’s resistance.” Briones reached down and lifted a bullhorn, took a breath, and then depressed the speaker button. “Federal Police. Drop your weapons. You’re surrounded. Drop your weapons – now.”
His announcement was greeted by a hail of gunfire. Slugs thumped into the side of the van as the cartel gunmen shot in the direction of the warning. Answering fire rattled from the rooftop and the surrounding vehicles, where twenty of his men were concealed.
The exchange was over in moments, with all of the cartel slavers wounded or dead on the pavement except the two who’d been in the truck and the unarmed driver. The pair in the cargo hold tossed out their pistols and stepped into the morning sunlight with their hands raised, the sight of their dead companions freezing them in place as Briones’s men closed on the truck, weapons trained on them.
Briones ran toward the vehicle, barking orders into his earbud. “Fuentes, take a dozen men and secure the building. There could be more in there.”
“Roger.”
A short sergeant shaped like a fireplug gestured to his contingent of men and led them into the warehouse as Briones neared the truck. His eyes met the little girl’s, and he felt a surge of rage course through him that it took every bit of his willpower to fight down. She was emaciated, her eyes huge, her gaze the thousand-yard stare of a death-row prisoner.
Briones pointed his pistol at the three men still in the cargo hold. “How many in the building?”
“Only two.”
A volley of gunfire from inside confirmed that Fuentes had found those gunmen. Briones motioned with his pistol. “One by one – get down on the ground. Keep your hands where we can see them at all times or you’re dead. You,” he called out to the driver. “You first.”
The prospect of any last minute resistance faded in the face of eight M16s trained on the cartel thugs from close range, and the gunmen did as ordered. When they were all cuffed, Briones climbed aboard the truck and moved to the doorway through which the little girl had retreated as she watched the arrest from a safe distance.
“It’s okay. We’re the police. You’re free. Tell the others to come out,” Briones said, taking soft steps toward her. The fear on her face was obvious, but she turned halfway toward the doorway and called out in a tiny voice.
More faces peered into the sunlight and Briones almost choked at the nauseating odor that drifted from the hold. The girls came out, one by one, their bare feet tentative on the metal truck bed, all of them soaked through with perspiration and waste. When the last one moved to the edge of the truck, Briones helped them to the ground, and two personnel carriers arrived, trailed by four ambulances.
The first little girl pointed at the hold. “Two are really sick. They’re still in there,” she said, and then the ambulances were pulling to a halt and the paramedics were rushing to the girls.
Briones approached the door of the hidden compartment and withdrew a flashlight from his belt. He held his breath as he shined the beam into the darkness, and the light bounced off two forms on the floor, curled into fetal positions, tiny in the gloom. He forced himself forward to the first and knelt down to feel her neck for a pulse. Neither body had one, and he cursed as he moved back into the light streaming through the doorway.
“Two bodies. Probably died from dehydration or the heat,” he reported to the watching parame
dics, his voice tight.
“Lieutenant?” one of Briones’s men called from where he was turning over the dead cartel shooters.
“On my way.”
When he arrived, he stared down at the pair of miscreants on the pavement and shook his head. “Women. They must have been the madams. Good riddance,” the officer said, and Briones managed a nod.
Fuentes waved to him from the building entrance. “There are about thirty more girls in here. And two hostile casualties. They fired first.”
Briones relayed the information through his earbud in a wooden tone, dizziness hitting with the force of a blow as the rush from the assault faded and left nothing but a creeping sense of horror at the depths to which his fellow man could sink. He switched to the headquarters channel and radioed Cruz, who’d worked until the wee hours and only gone home to snatch what sleep he could before coming in early.
Cruz’s voice sounded fatigued. “How did it go?”
“About what we expected.” He filled the captain in.
“Good work. Get back here as soon as possible – leave Fuentes to clean up and make the reports. I need you to track down that Land Rover.”
“I’m on my way, Capitan.”
“Good man.” Cruz paused. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. I…it’s just hard to imagine why they’d lock these children in an unventilated hot box for a drive from the Guatemalan border. We lost two of them.” Briones shook his head and sighed.
“You saved them, Lieutenant. The rest are alive and will have completely different lives because of you. I’d count that as a win.”
“I know. It just gets to me sometimes.”
“You wouldn’t be human if it didn’t.” Cruz matched the younger man’s sigh. “Now get in here so we can put Aranas back behind bars, where he belongs.”
“Yes, sir.”
Chapter 27
Rage Of The Assassin Page 12
