The Breakout

by Ryan David Jahn

  Gael shook his head. “No.”

  “I think we need to bring Rocha out here.”

  James said, “That’s a good idea.”

  He walked to the back office and knocked on the door. Coop opened it, looked out into the room and said, “Who the fuck are these people?”

  “DEA.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Can you bring Rocha out here?”

  Coop nodded, walked to the chair Rocha was sitting in, and rolled it out into the church’s main room. Rocha sat in the chair, saying nothing, looking from one face to another. Finally he smiled at James and said, “I guess you’re not gonna be able to kill me now, no matter what else happens. Let me state too, that I’m willing to cooperate with law enforcement in any way as long as you keep me alive. If James Murphy kills me, you’ll never get to Mulligan Shoibli.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Rocha,” George said, his voice angry, and because of those words James decided he liked the guy.

  “What the hell are we doing here?” Ellison said.

  “We’re going to clear up this situation,” George said. “Somebody in this room is Mulligan Shoibli, I’m sure of it, and I’m gonna find out who.”

  “What do you mean someone in this room?” Ellison said. “You’re treating me like a fucking suspect, Rankin? After what I did to get you out of that mess with Diego Blanco?”

  “What mess with Diego Blanco?” Rocha said.

  “Shut the fuck up,” George said to Rocha. To Horace Ellison he said, “You are a suspect, sir. You and Billingham both. Somebody at the El Paso office is Mulligan Shoibli and I have evidence that implicates both of you.”

  “I’ve spent my whole career fighting scumbags like this guy,” Ellison said, nodding at Rocha, “and you’re gonna bring me down here and accuse me of—”

  “I’m not accusing anybody of anything, sir,” George said. “I’m just following the evidence and it pointed at—”

  James said, “How do you spell Shoibli?”

  George told him and said, “Why does that matter?”

  James swung his pistol around and aimed it at Lou Billingham. He thumbed off the safety. As he did this, Horace and George both instinctively drew their own weapons and aimed them at James. Coop, seeing this, drew his and aimed it at Horace.

  Nobody moved.

  “Put down your weapon, Mr. Murphy,” Horace Ellison said.

  “Keep your hands out of your pockets,” James said to Billingham, ignoring Horace’s words. He then reached into his own pocket.

  “Keep your hand where I can see it,” George said.

  “What am I gonna do, George, pull another gun?”

  Coop said, “Let’s all just lower our weapons and talk this through. Nothing has to get violent here.”

  James pulled Rocha’s burner from his pocket.

  “What are you doing, Mr. Murphy?” George said.

  “Mulligan Shoibli is an anagram for Lou Billingham.” He held up the cell phone. “This is Rocha’s. The only person who might call it is Mulligan Shoibli. It rang about an hour ago and I picked up, but nobody spoke. I’m gonna return the call now.”

  “You can’t honestly think—” Lou Billingham began.

  “Shut up,” James said. He pushed the button.

  Seconds passed.

  Guns remained raised. The room was silent but tense.

  Then—after what felt like an eternity—something in Lou Billingham’s pocket began to ring.

  “You motherfucker,” James said, stepping toward him, ready to fire a round into his forehead, consequences be damned. But George stepped in front of him, stepped in front of the barrel, aiming his own weapon.

  “Don’t do this, Mr. Murphy,” George said. “I know you want revenge. I know you want the man who killed your sister to pay for what he did, but it can’t happen like this. We’ll arrest him. He’ll be tried. He’ll spend the rest of his life in prison, and I can almost guarantee you this, it won’t be a very long life.”

  While George was standing between James and his target, Lou Billingham ran out the back door.

  43

  James, ignoring the gun in Rankin’s hands, shoved him aside and sprinted out the door after Billingham. The man ran to a black sedan and was pulling open the driver’s-side door when James heard a gunshot from either Bogart or Normal. The door handle exploded and Billingham yanked his hand back. James dove, tackled him, and sitting on his chest, put the barrel of his pistol into the man’s mouth.

  “You motherfucker,” James said, “you’re gonna pay for—”

  But Rankin tackled him, knocking him off Billingham, and held his wrists to the ground. “Don’t do it, James—not here and not like this.”

  “Get the fuck off of me, motherfucker.”

  But Rankin leaned in close and said, “You kill him here, you’re going to prison. I know the charges against you in La Paz are bogus—the drug charges anyway—and the DEA knows that La Paz cops are dirty. We can get the charges dropped by threatening a conspiracy indictment against them—every one of them by name. An entire Mexican police force charged with conspiracy in an international drug trafficking case—the federal government will lean on them hard to leave you alone. But if you kill Billingham, your life is over. He’s a cop. I don’t care how sympathetic your reasons are for doing what you want to do, killing a cop—even a dirty motherfucker like Billingham—will get you locked away for the rest of your life. He’s gonna pay, I promise you that. But don’t throw your fucking life away.”

  James exhaled a long sigh.

  He said, “I’m okay. Get off me.”

  “You sure?”

  “Get the fuck off me.”

  Rankin got to his feet and held out a hand. James grabbed it and allowed the man to pull him up.

  While all this was going on, Horace and Gael handcuffed Billingham and put him into the back of the black sedan. James looked at him through the glass and felt nothing.

  He glanced toward Rankin. “What now?”

  “We have Alejandro Rocha in our custody. He’s a pragmatic man. He’ll testify to get a reduced sentence. We have Gael’s testimony, and information he’s given us about how the organization is run. We’ll be able to put a case together—a good case. You need to go home and live your life. I’ll make sure the man who killed your sister pays. It won’t be with a bullet to the head. It’ll be through the court system. But you remember, your sister’s body was found in El Paso, and Texas still has the death penalty.”

  44

  The charges against James in Mexico were dropped just like George Rankin had said they’d be. He and the others headed back to El Paso. Headed back to Fort Bliss. James had been on leave because of his sister’s funeral—and even if he hadn’t been, his false arrest meant he had a legitimate reason for being absent—but the others were expecting to be court-martialed. Instead, they were reprimanded strongly and told they’d been irresponsible and if they missed a single shift from now until their discharge, they would be court-martialed—and they’d also get a foot right up the ass.

  Though his absence wasn’t at issue, James was still in serious trouble, and faced court-martial for stealing a weapon from base. His trial lasted three hours and he was sentenced to a month in the brig. It would have been six months, but people were sympathetic to his reasons for doing what he did. He served his time patiently.

  Once out of the brig and back at work on Fort Bliss, awaiting his next deployment, James kept up with the news coming out of La Paz, and with Pilar sitting beside him on their couch, learned about Rocha giving up people in Chicago, El Paso, Los Angeles, and New York. The DEA seized his bank accounts, recovering two million dollars, and during a search of his home, also found four million dollars in cash and his well-kept records—five years of careful bookkeeping.

  His records indicated that over nine million dollars had been provided to Mulligan Shoibli, either in the form of wire transfers or cash drops, but the only account with any money in it was the one they’
d already had record of, and it only held half a million dollars. The other accounts, they discovered, had already been emptied.

  James waited for news about Lou Billingham to surface, but it never did. The DEA was apparently keeping that aspect of the case under wraps for as long as they could.

  He wasn’t all that surprised.

  * * *

  Two weeks after his son was born, Gael Castillo Jimenez knocked on Horace Ellison’s office door. He sat down in an uncomfortable chair and looked across the desk’s tidy surface to the man on the other side. Ellison looked back with blank eyes, waiting.

  The silence stretched for fifteen seconds. “Are we having a staring contest or did you come in here to talk to me about something?”

  Gael exhaled a sigh. He said, “I can’t do it anymore. I have to quit.”

  Ellison nodded. “I’ve been waiting for this. You have a family now. You have a son. You look at him and you think about your wife raising him alone because you’ve been killed on the job. It makes your chest feel tight. It makes your stomach ache. I’ve seen it happen to other men and was waiting for it to happen to you.”

  “I’ll get my cases in order and I’ll be available to whoever takes them over. I just can’t do it anymore.”

  “Fine. Pain in my ass, but like I said, I’ve been waiting for this.”

  “Okay.” Gael got to his feet and started for the door.

  “What are you gonna do?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “For work—what’s next for you?”

  “I don’t know. Sarah’s gonna go back to work in three weeks. Thought I might be a stay-at-home dad for a while and figure it out.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  * * *

  Four months later, James took a taxi to El Paso International Airport. He arrived at 10:30 for an 11:33 flight to Atlanta, where he had a connection. He didn’t check any luggage. His carry-on bag held almost everything he’d need. He also carried with him a guitar in a hard case he’d bought at a pawnshop for fifty dollars. There was one item he couldn’t take with him, but he’d mailed it to his destination hotel four days earlier, and when he arrived, the three separate packages should be waiting at the front desk for him. All he’d have to do then was assemble the pieces.

  He sat at his gate and waited. He tried to read but found he couldn’t concentrate. He waited until almost everyone else had boarded the plane, picked up his duffel bag and guitar, and walked to the counter. He handed his ticket over. The woman he handed it to scanned it and handed it back. She smiled and said, “Have a nice flight.”

  “I’m sure I will,” he said.

  He boarded the plane, one of the flight attendants taking his guitar and storing it for him, found his seat, stowed his luggage, and sat down.

  45

  James Murphy landed in Grand Cayman and took a taxi to a Comfort Suites hotel about a block away from a beach with water bluer than the sky. He’d never been to George Town before, never been to the Cayman Islands at all—he’d only traveled internationally while in the employ of the Marine Corps and they weren’t exactly famous for sending folks to beautiful destinations—but he liked it immediately. He looked at the sea between the buildings as they drove. He almost wished he could spend more time here. But he had to be back on base by Monday, and anyway, when you visited a place with the sole purpose of killing a man, it was best not to linger once the job was done.

  When the taxi arrived at the hotel, he paid the driver, and stepped out into the eighty-degree weather. The driver popped the trunk and pulled out his duffel bag and his guitar. James took them and walked into the lobby, made his way to the counter, and told the woman he had a reservation.

  “Name?”

  “James Murphy.”

  He checked in and the woman told him they’d received three packages for him earlier that day. He took the boxes and—overloaded with stuff—made his way to his first-floor hotel room. He set the boxes, his duffel bag, and the guitar on the bed and walked back to the door. He attached the chain lock.

  Once the three boxes were open, he went about reassembling the rifle he’d broken down and shipped to himself. The Cayman Islands had very strict gun laws, and if he was caught with this rifle, he’d be facing a minimum of ten years in prison. But his chances of being caught now were minimal. His worry had been the mail—and the rifle had made it through.

  He opened his guitar case. Inside the case was a cheap acoustic-electric guitar. Before leaving for the airport, he’d drilled holes into one of the pickups and slid bullets down into it, one under each string. He’d run it through the X-ray belt at the airport without incident, though a TSA agent had made him throw out his double-edged safety blades, so he wouldn’t be shaving while in George Town. His stomach had been in a knot until he cleared security.

  But once he did, it loosened up.

  Now he was here. He knew which hotel his target was staying at, and he’d be watching for the next twenty-four hours. Or less if he got the chance to kill the motherfucker before his time ran out, and he hoped like hell he did.

  He slid the six bullets from the guitar and pulled the guitar from its case. He loaded the rifle and shoved it into the case, stuffing pillows around it so the rifle wouldn’t rattle. He closed and latched the case, grabbed it by the handle, and stepped out of his room.

  He walked out to the street and thought about everything that happened at the old church in Mexico. He thought about the fact that when Gael Castillo Jimenez had shaken hands with Lou Billingham, he’d had the opportunity to slip Mulligan Shoibli’s cell phone into his pocket. He thought about Alejandro Rocha telling him that Gael had been going to Juarez to pick up the burners. He thought about the fact that as an undercover DEA agent, he had more access to both worlds than anybody else. He thought about his months of watching the man since then—almost certain Gael Castillo Jimenez was Mulligan Shoibli but needing more proof before he could allow himself to squeeze his trigger.

  Now—six months after everything that happened in Mexico—the man was in George Town, Grand Cayman, and James was certain he was here to clean up his financial affairs. His wife Sarah might believe they’d brought their four-month-old son here for a brief getaway, but James knew more of the story than she did.

  It was unfortunate that in getting justice for Layla, James would be creating a widow and a fatherless child, but that was death for you, the effects always rippling outward from the point of impact, sometimes for years and sometimes for decades.

  Gael had brought this on himself—and he’d brought it on his family.

  James walked six blocks, crossed the street, and made his way into a resort hotel across from the one in which the man he wished to kill was staying.

  He took the elevator to the top floor.

  * * *

  George Rankin had been waiting months for Gael to fuck up and finally he had. In a way it broke his heart. Gael was his friend—Gael had been his friend—and he’d wanted to be wrong about his suspicions. But he hadn’t been wrong. Gael had visited six banks in the last three days. He’d walk in with an empty duffel bag in hand and come out with a full one. He’d walk into the next with his full duffel bag and come out empty-handed. George figured he’d emptied his bank accounts some time ago, put the money into safe deposit boxes, and waited. He’d been patient for a man living on his wife’s earnings as a hair stylist. Nine million dollars he didn’t touch for six months. George was impressed in a way.

  But then he went and touched it.

  George knew it would happen as soon as Gael booked his ticket to Grand Cayman. Here was a small island with a population of forty thousand, but somehow it managed to support six hundred banks, one bank for every sixty-six inhabitants. There was a reason forty thousand offshore companies were registered in the Cayman Islands.

  Gael was currently out on the beach with his family. Two agents—dressed in shorts and flip-flops—were watching him.

  Geo
rge himself was sitting in a van with four more agents, ready to move the moment they could be sure of taking Gael in without injury to his wife or son—or to any innocent bystanders. The time would come soon. He was sure of it.

  * * *

  Gael sat on a towel on the beach and watched Sarah play with Grayson, their beautiful baby boy. He could hardly believe he had a son. He could hardly believe he’d gotten away with what he’d gotten away with. It’d been a little rocky at times. He’d come close to getting himself killed. But in the end, it had paid off. Paid off big.

  When you were undercover, you learned to be the person you were pretending to be, which meant internally you were two people at once.

  For years, he’d been both Gael Castillo Jimenez and Mulligan Shoibli. He’d built a drug empire while simultaneously fighting drug traffickers. It had been a good arrangement. On the one hand, he was making the world less violent by taking down the worst of the cartels, or trying to, and on the other hand, he was clearing a path for his own organization. Even he wasn’t certain what his true motives had been at first. He’d told himself that drugs were impossible to stop, told himself that if he didn’t fill the hole left in the drug trade by his arrests, that someone much worse would fill it. He might as well make a little money. But he wasn’t sure. The different parts of himself didn’t communicate much with one another.

  For a long time, things had run smoothly. He’d operated under the radar, using what he knew about the DEA to keep himself and the organization invisible.

  Eventually, however, George Rankin took an interest in the Rocha cartel.

  He knew that meant the days of the organization were numbered—and he knew too, that it would eventually come out that someone at the DEA was the real power behind it. Fortunately, he’d prepared for that eventuality. He’d created evidence—circumstantial though it was—that could be pointed at either Horace Ellison or Lou Billingham, depending on the circumstances under which it was discovered, and trusted that when the time came, he’d be able to frame one of them. He’d gotten himself assigned to the case and gone undercover, becoming three people rather than two, and he’d manipulated circumstances and evidence as well as he could. He knew Rocha had to go down, and knowing this, he knew too that it meant Rocha could never find out who he was. The man was a pragmatist, with no moral center, and he’d do whatever he had to in order to survive. Which meant Gael had been at constant risk of death.