“Thought you could use some help,” said Shotgun. “Interested in a ride?”
IV
Shotgun pounded on the roof of the cab as I climbed into the back of the truck. Big Mike put it in reverse and we lurched backward, spinning into a three-point turn and then zooming out around the other side of the buildings. Saul and Paul Smith were waiting for us; both hopped into the back.
“Where are the others?” I asked.
“I sent them back with Veronica,” said Shotgun. “I told them just to go straight to the border.”
“All right. We gotta pick up the old guy in that house over there. That unit there.”
Shotgun banged on the roof again and the truck stopped. I took his gun and covered him while he ran into the condo.
I’d guessed which unit I’d left him in. And I’d guessed … wrong. Shotgun emerged a few seconds later, empty-handed.
“Next building, next building,” I yelled.
A few seconds later, he came running out with Mr. Leferd over his shoulder. He hopped right up on the truck bed with him, as if he didn’t weigh an ounce.
“Let’s get out of here,” I yelled to Big Mike. “Take us up the back way where the others went.”
“No, Dick, the way’s clear to the highway,” Shotgun told me. “Didn’t you hear Junior?”
“He hasn’t transmitted.”
Shotgun reached for my ear set. My wire had broken, just as Veronica’s had.
Junior had been trying to get me to tell me Shotgun was coming. When he couldn’t get me on the radio, he had resorted to the phones. He was the one who’d called earlier and almost gotten me killed.
“All right, let’s get out of here,” I said.
I grabbed one of the spare rifles in the back and pointed it over the roof of the cab as we drove. The thugs had taken a thorough beating, but they weren’t all dead; Junior had seen several flee into the community center. The truck picked up speed and we sailed up the hill. No one came out, no one fired at us.
We slowed down as we came to the top of the hill and turned onto the main road.
“Dick, Junior says we got trucks moving through the hamlet,” warned Shotgun, putting his hand over his ear. “Army trucks.”
He handed me his ear set.
“What’s coming at us, Junior?” I asked.
“Couple of troop trucks—Mexican army, looks like.”
“Army or cartel?”
“Well, they have Mexican flags and they look official.”
The truth is, it was probably immaterial. The army often did the work of the cartel here.
I could already see the dust coming up ahead. I pounded on the top of the cab to warn Big Mike. “Take us past the trucks,” I yelled. “Flank speed. Get us past them.”
Big Mike stepped on the gas. But as we dipped down the hill, I saw it wasn’t going to work—the lead troop truck pulled across the road to block our path. Big Mike started to angle to the right, where it looked like there was just enough space to get by. Then the second truck pulled up to block it. Big Mike slammed on the brakes, jamming Shotgun and me against the back of the cab.
Soldiers hopped out of the back of the trucks, brandishing their assault rifles.
“A lot of ’em,” muttered Shotgun. “I may have to reload.”
“Relax,” I told him. “Let’s see if we can talk our way out of this.”
I got down out of the pickup. An officer jumped from the cab of the second truck and walked up behind the troops. He was a sawed-off rooster kind of guy, strutting behind a big belly. I guessed his ego would be about twice as big as his stomach.
I underestimated.
“You are under arrest,” he said, using English.
“Why would you want to arrest us?”
“You are drug dealers.”
“We’re not drug dealers.”
“We will judge this. Tell your men to surrender or they will be shot.”
I took a quick glance around. Upward of fifty soldiers were scattered in front of the vehicles. And I could hear another truck coming up in the distance.
Talk about a Butch Cassidy-Sundance Kid moment. I certainly wasn’t willing to trust my bruised carcass to the Mexican justice system. On the other hand, fighting it out wasn’t much of an option. My life insurance policy did not cover self-inflicted massacres.
I wracked my brain for contacts in the Mexican army I trusted. I needn’t have wasted the mental power—such a contact, such an officer, doesn’t exist. I thought of calling Narco, but of course he couldn’t help without blowing his cover. My only option would be to call on the State Department.
Even writing that line makes me gag.
“Who’s your commander?” I said, bluffing for time.
“I am in charge here,” said Big Belly. “I make the decisions. You are under arrest. You will come peaceful, or you will come with duress.”
This wasn’t the place to explain the proper formation of adverbs from adjectives. I made a few more mental calculations. If I shot him, would his troops scatter? How many men could Shotgun shoot before needing to pop another magazine into his weapon?
There was a commotion behind the second troop truck. It sounded at first as if it was soldiers piling out of the late-arriving truck. Then I saw that the men holding on us at the front of the line were stepping aside.
Two women appeared—Juanita and Veronica. Another Mexican woman and a young man came through behind them, the leading edge of a small group of villagers.
“Where is the colonel?” shouted Juanita in Spanish. “Where is the Little Rooster?”
There are other translations for the phrase she used, but we’ll accept that one as the “official” translation.
Juanita marched up to Big Belly and began haranguing him. He held his own for a few moments, shouting that she needed to show respect for a member of the military and a decorated war hero.27 But she easily gave as good as she got, and within a few minutes Big Belly began to look like a henpecked husband.
“You allow yourself to be a tool of criminals,” said Juanita. “You betray the people of Mexico. You betray yourself. You betray me, and all of your relatives. You have blood on your hands. These cartel people are the worst kind of criminals, the dirt at the bottom of the ocean. You take yourself to church on Sunday and you have the nerve to receive! To receive our holy God. You call yourself a Catholic. But you work for the devil.”
Juanita’s tirade went on for a good ten minutes. Big Belly seemed to shrink another inch as each minute passed. Juanita invoked religion, nationhood, humanity, common sense—I wished I had taped the speech.
Finally, she got to the point, at least as far as we were concerned.
“These people—this one here—” She jabbed her finger at me. “They are trying to do the good thing, the right thing. They fight the criminals. And you dare to arrest them? Your mother would be ashamed. I’m sure she is ashamed.”
Juanita glanced toward heaven as she made the sign of the cross. That was just too much for Big Belly.
“You may go,” he said, raising his hand. “Go. Go. Go.”
V
It would be tempting to think that all it took to turn a corrupt Mexican colonel into an upstanding Christian soldier-statesman was a tongue lashing by a beefy short-order cook who happened to be a second cousin.
The truth is a little more complicated. Standing aside and letting us pass didn’t cost the colonel anything, since there were no cartel members around at that moment to see what was going on. In fact, it made life much simpler for him, since someone was sure to protest to the government if he took us away.
Then there was the matter of the helicopters in the air above us.
Chester Arthur had scrambled his helo from the airport. Getting the full sit rep from Junior as things unfolded, he realized that a single unarmed helicopter wasn’t going to be in a position to help if the attack continued. So he decided he needed to get some backup.
As we’ve already discussed
, the U.S. military has very strict rules when it comes to crossing the border, rules that can be summarized in two words: DO NOT.
However, in most circumstances they can engage in action against obvious drug smugglers. Realizing this, Chet crossed over the border, then dipped down low so that he disappeared from radar. Circling to the south, he flew a pattern about thirty-five feet off the ground, rising just enough to be detected by a border surveillance radar. The operator of the radar assumed that an aircraft flying that pattern was a smuggler. When Chet refused to answer queries, a DEA border task force was alerted. Planes and a helicopter were scrambled to intercept and question him.
Chet played possum, hovering and peeking up just enough to make it seem he was up to something big. As a pair of Air National Guard Blackhawks came into view, he high-tailed it for the border. The ruse might or might not have worked on its own, but in this case Chet fortunately recognized the call sign of one of the scrambled helos. It belonged to a friend of his.
He broadcast a greeting to the pilot on his squadron channel. The man was incredulous.
“Chester? You’re working for the dopers?”
“No. Some friends on the ground need some help,” he said. Chet briefly explained.
“We’re not supposed to cross the border,” said his friend finally.
“Not even in hot pursuit?”
“I’m not in hot pursuit.”
“If it’s Dick Marcinko, who’s gotten himself in hot water with the cartels for killing some of the bastards?”
“Come to think of it,” replied his friend. “Our GPS unit seems to be malfunctioning. I’m not entirely sure where the border is. I better get a little lower to see if I recognize anything.”
Chester and the Air National Guard Blackhawks appeared just as Juanita ended her tirade. And just for good measure, a helicopter from the Mexican attorney general’s office28 came north as well.
Still, I’d like to think that Juanita’s appeal to justice and propriety had something to do with it. For all its troubles, the Mexican military still has some good officers left in it. I’d like to think that Big Belly was one of them.
“Like to” doesn’t mean I will, though.
* * *
Veronica joined us in the truck. She’d taken the old folks to within sight of the border, where a pair of Customs agents alerted by Junior were waiting. As soon as she saw they were going to be OK, she raced back to the Mexican village on foot and rallied Juanita. The cook took care of the rest. The Mexicans hated the cartel as much as the Americans did.
“Two or three of their kids were watching from the hills and saw you kicking the crap out of the cartel goons,” Veronica told me as we drove up toward the border. “Once they saw how weak the toughs really were, they were encouraged.”
They might have shown their encouragement by joining a little earlier, I thought, but I kept my mouth shut. There is no sense ruining the mood of a beautiful woman.
Unfortunately, the Mexicans had no information that could help her find her grandparents. Saul, et al, were equally stumped. Veronica painstakingly questioned each resident in turn, asking a full range of questions about the bankruptcy and the cartel’s takeover, the work on the property, and a dozen other things that seemed to have little connection to their disappearance. Each time she finished, she looked at me and shook her head ever so slightly.
“I’m sorry they don’t have any information on your grandparents,” I told her when she was done. “If there’s anything I can do to help—”
“Anything?”
All sorts of visions popped into my mind when she said that—including one of Karen Fairchild wringing my neck.
Have I mentioned that Veronica was a beautiful woman? Have I described the way she filled those khaki pants … or the way her chest strained the buttons on her shirt ever so slightly?
Stop slobbering. You’ll get the book wet. Worse, if it’s an e-reader, you could electrocute yourself.
“Would you really do anything to help?” Veronica asked.
“Within reason,” I said. “And maybe a few things beyond reason.”
Veronica put her hand on mine. At that point, resistance was futile.
“Anything,” I told her.
“I’d like to question de Sarcena. And trade him for my grandparents.”
I’m not sure how long it was before I managed to speak. “That wasn’t quite what I had in mind.”
“Oh?”
“Look—I don’t know how to tell you this.”
She put her finger to my lips. “I know they’re probably dead. But if there’s a chance, I have to take it.”
Her lip quivered. A single tear rolled out of her right eye.
“Let’s see what he has to say,” I told her.
* * *
While we’re heading to the ranch, let’s tie up some loose ends.
Thanks to Junior, authorities on both sides of the border now knew about the tunnel. More importantly, so did the news media. Reporters and camera crews scrambled to catch up with the police and military units descending on the area.
On the American side, the tunnel surfaced in an abandoned gas station on a scrub road about a hundred yards from the border. Angel Hills was a little more than a half mile away as the crow flies. That may not sound like much, but for a tunnel that’s pretty damn long. In September of 2010, authorities discovered a pair of two-thousand-foot-long tunnels in the San Diego area used to smuggle marijuana (and surely other things) across the border. If you add in the access area before the security center in Angel Hills, this tunnel was a little longer. Those tunnels had a primitive railcar arrangement just like this one, but weren’t quite as wide. In fact, of the 125 tunnels that have been discovered under the border during the last decade or so, the Angel Hills tunnel ranks as arguably the most sophisticated.
Of course, that’s only among those that have been discovered.
Unfortunately, there were no thugs in the tunnel when the authorities closed in. And while we can make several guesses about what the tunnel was used for, nothing was recovered when the police swarmed in. Pot is usually transported in wrapped-up bricks and other containers; the same with other drugs and contraband. That makes finding residue a little harder than scraping the side of your pipe bowl.
It’s also important to note that the contraband flows two ways—I’d be more than willing to guess that a good portion of the weapons we grabbed at the terror farm came across the border through the tunnel. The same for the cartel’s cash.
I wasn’t surprised to find that every one of the residents who had left Angel Hills wanted to return to their homes as soon as possible. Now that they had fought for their homes, they weren’t about to leave them. Various promises were made by the authorities; whether they’ll be kept or not I have no idea.
* * *
And then there’s Trace.
We last saw her and the boys by the side of the road, a policeman29 holding a gun on her.
Anyone who has ever dealt with Trace Dahlgren knows that the last thing you want to do is pull a gun on her. It’s just not a healthy thing to do. There’s no saying how she will react—a kick to the face, a hard karate-style chop to the arm, maybe a tuck and roll into your legs.
In this case, the police officer was far enough away and the light was sufficiently dim that none of those responses was particularly appropriate. Trace spread her hands, and took a step to the side.
The police officer then made a critical mistake. He misinterpreted her actions as a tacit surrender. And having successfully bullied her (he thought), he decided to try for more.
“You are a good-looking one,” said the officer. “Maybe we can make a private arrangement. Unzip your jeans.”
“Trace?” Tex called from the car. “Problemo?”
The policeman turned his gun in Tex’s direction. The next thing the cop knew was that he was eating dirt—Trace had launched herself in a flying leap at his head, tumbling him down. His gun flew away, b
ut it wouldn’t have helped him much anyway: his head and most of his body were in the process of being stomped by Trace, who had rebounded to her feet. She went at him with all the gusto a would-be rapist deserves, making sure he would be in no position to try anything similar with anyone else.
The man’s partner climbed down off the cab of the truck and began shooting. He did so as he ran, with the usual result—his shots were wildly inaccurate. Finally he stopped, took aim—and fell down to the ground, three bullets in his forehead.
“I was sleeping, damn it,” said Stoneman. “Waking me up with this shit.”
* * *
While there are plenty of corrupt policemen in Mexico, these two slimebags weren’t among them. They were not actual policemen at all, but cartel members who donned uniforms and were shaking down truck drivers and tourists, a common occurrence on just about any road in Mexico. The police car and the uniforms had been stolen from a town in the next state over the week before.
While Trace and the boys were figuring this out, the truck driver decided to get on with his journey. Having made an investment in the situation, Trace decided he wasn’t going to get away without having his trailer inspected. She ran to the car and jumped back behind the wheel; Tex and Stoneman were barely able to get in as she burned rubber and launched after the tractor-trailer.
“Tell him to pull over,” she yelled to Tex as she raced alongside the truck.
Before Tex could say anything, the truck driver twisted his wheel in their direction. The sudden lunge shoved their car off the other shoulder.
“Enough of this shit,” said Tex.
He took his rifle and blew out the rear tires of the truck, the only ones he could get as they fell behind. The vehicle bounded off the road, then twisted and turned over.
The driver scrambled out and took off, running into the darkness.
“Let him go,” said Trace, putting up her hand to stop Tex from firing. “It’s not worth killing him.”
“These guys may disagree,” said Stoneman. “The ones who are alive, anyway.”
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