Power and Empire

by Marc Cameron

  “Knock yourself out.” Callahan pushed to her feet. “No sign of a guy who calls himself Matarife?”

  “Nope,” Anderson said. “That name has come up in a couple of different interviews lately, but we didn’t have an ID. Anonymous caller said Matarife’s real name is Ernie Pacheco. This is Pacheco’s place, but he’s not here.”

  “What about a girl named Magdalena?” Callahan asked. “She should speak some English.”

  “Sorry, Kelsey,” Anderson said, more tender now. He’d obviously been around Callahan long enough to read that this was something extra-sensitive. “We haven’t identified the bodies out back, but neither of the girls inside call themselves Magdalena.”

  “Tell me about what’s inside the house,” Caruso said.

  Anderson turned. “Follow me. But I gotta warn you. It is some gruesome shit.” He nodded to the Johnson County deputy at the door, as if FBI badges weren’t enough to gain Caruso and Callahan entry.

  • • •

  The living area of the house looked normal enough, if a little on the tattered side for such a large home. Wood paneling and oak furniture gave the place an early-1970s feel and added to the oppressive darkness of the situation. Caruso imagined this would be what Jeffrey Dahmer’s place would have felt like if he could have afforded a big house. There was a big-screen television fixed to the wall above a gas fireplace. A half-bowl of salsa and the remnants of tortilla chips occupied the coffee table along with a half-dozen empty bottles of Corona. The place could have easily belonged to an upper-middle-class Texas family who had gone to bed without cleaning up after watching a ball game—except for the smell.

  Caruso had never been one for incense. The sweet smell of patchouli was overpowering—but not quite strong enough to hide the outhouse odors coming from the next room.

  Anderson pushed open a door off the kitchen and motioned for them to come inside.

  “We found the two girls in here. They were chained to eyebolts set in five-gallon buckets of concrete. Six more buckets had no girls attached. We’ll swab those for DNA.” Anderson shook his head, pointing to the far side of the room with his notebook. “Sick bastards made the poor kids use those buckets there to go to the restroom.” He nodded to a tall door painted bright fire-engine red at the far end of the room. “The worst part is on through there.” He stopped. “I wouldn’t blame you if you don’t go in, Kelsey.”

  She glared daggers at him. “What?”

  “I’m just saying, I wouldn’t go back in there if I didn’t have to.”

  “Come on,” Callahan said.

  Caruso felt himself holding his breath as he followed the others into what had once been a deep three-car garage but was now bricked off from the outside. Soundproof foam and old mattresses covered the walls. In one corner, a high-back leather chair sat atop a rough plywood podium. A leg iron and chain were affixed to the base of the chair. There was a small HD camera mounted to a tripod set up out front, with a cable running from the camera to an open laptop computer. In the farthest corner from the chair, three cameras and three pole-mounted lights surrounded a timber bed. Clear plastic sheeting took the place of regular bed linens. Blue plastic hospital restraints hung from each post of the heavy bedframe. A stainless-steel table behind the cameras held an assortment of whips and gags.

  “I’ve seen a lot of crazy shit in my day,” Anderson whispered. “But I never seen anything like this.”

  “I have,” Callahan said. She motioned them out of the room, and then out of the house.

  “I didn’t want to talk in front of that open computer,” she said once they were standing in the driveway. “Not until Forensics gets a chance to look it over. There’s too big a chance it’s streaming everything we say to some other location.”

  “That’s why you make the big money, Kelsey,” Anderson said.

  “You said you’d seen this before,” Caruso said.

  “Sadly, I have,” Callahan said. She peeled off the gloves with a hooked thumb so they turned inside out and she didn’t have to touch the outside of either with her fingers. “I’m pretty convinced they were sitting the girls in that big chair and auctioning them off on video. Any girl that didn’t bring in a high enough bid was then used in a snuff video.”

  Caruso stifled a gasp. He shook his head, imagining John Clark’s reaction when he’d seen something like this. It sure explained the dead guy at the gravesite and the woman found floating in the pool missing part of her windpipe.

  Callahan cocked her head toward Anderson, something dawning on her. “Did either of the girls give a description of the guy who saved them?”

  Caruso kept his face passive.

  The Ranger shrugged. “Like I said. We’re still waiting on a Spanish speaker. Why? You have an idea who it was?”

  Callahan shot an accusing glance at Caruso. “I’ve got a pretty good guess,” she said.

  30

  The Hendley Associates Gulfstream hit heavy turbulence six hours north of Buenos Aires. The movement jostled Jack Ryan, Jr., awake from a much-needed seven-hour nap. Chavez was still sawing logs in the seat across from Lisanne, but Adara and Midas sat at the small conference table in mid-cabin. They both made good use of the G550’s encrypted satellite Wi-Fi.

  Jack sat up from the leather couch and raised both arms above his head in what his kid sister called a “squinty-eyed” stretch.

  Midas glanced up from his computer.

  “Morning, sunshine.”

  Jack nodded but said nothing. He stood, steadying himself against the armrest in the bumpy air.

  Lisanne unbuckled her seat belt and moved toward the galley. She whispered, so as not to disturb Chavez. “I have a fresh pot of coffee on.”

  Ryan made his way forward and put his hand on the lavatory door. Still barely conscious of the fact that he was hurtling through the air at 35,000 feet, he gave her what he was sure was a dopey grin.

  “Filling up on strong coffee is second on my to-do list.”

  Lisanne leaned forward, giving him a conspiratorial nod. “It’ll be waiting here for you,” she said.

  Three minutes later, Ryan set his coffee cup on the conference table and then dropped down in the aisle to pump out thirty push-ups and make sure he was fully awake.

  “Any new crises while I was out?” Ryan asked when he was done and seated at the table with the others.

  Adara was deep in thought, poring over some article.

  Midas looked up and shook his head. “Not that I know of. I woke up about ten minutes before y—”

  “Listen to this,” Adara said, cutting him off.

  Ryan moved closer. Midas lowered his computer.

  “There’s a shop near Recoleta Cemetery that sells lemon-cucumber-flavored ice cream.”

  Midas shook his head. “And that’s big news why?”

  Adara said, “It’s big news, my good sir, because I like cucumbers and I like ice cream.”

  Midas chuckled. “I’m a mint chocolate-chip man.”

  “But seriously,” Adara said. “I bring it up because I was checking the lead that Ding found regarding the visiting trade ministers. Several countries have posted agendas on their respective websites. Looks like they’re all attending a dinner not far from Recoleta Cemetery, so I decided to do some research prior to our arrival.”

  Ryan shook his head. “You keep saying ‘Recoleta Cemetery’ like we should know it.”

  “Sorry,” Adara said. “Some Navy buddies and I burned a week of leave down here one winter—summer here, I guess. Recoleta Cemetery was one of my favorite places. Evita Perón’s buried there. It’s beautiful but slightly spooky, with aboveground crypts like little houses. Many of them have windows where the coffins are visible.” She consulted a legal pad beside her computer on the teak conference table. “Anyway, so far, it looks like the ministers of agriculture from Argentina, Canada, Urug
uay, China, and Japan are on the guest list for the dinner. The Chinese foreign minister is also supposed to be in Argentina by tomorrow, but his staff is a little more taciturn about posting his itinerary.”

  Jack gave a thoughtful nod. “How about the U.S.?”

  “No one, as far as I can tell,” Adara said. “I’m not sure how the beef lobby would feel about us doing anything to help Argentine exports.”

  “Speaking of beef,” Midas said, “I volunteer to post up inside the restaurant. Argentina’s supposed to be hell on wheels when it comes to beefsteak. You can keep your damn cucumber ice cream, thank you very much.”

  Ryan grabbed the laptop from his bag and brought up a map of the Recoleta area of Buenos Aires.

  “What’s the name of the place?”

  “Helado . . .”

  Midas chuckled and shook his head. “He’s talking about the venue restaurant, not your ice cream parlor.”

  Adara blushed and then glanced down at her notepad again. “Parrilla Aires Criollos.” She pronounced the double l’s like y’s, as someone from Mexico would.

  “Parizha!” Ding Chavez corrected without opening his eyes. He coughed, licking his lips and turning slightly in his seat like he might drift off to sleep again. “Argentines speak Castilian Spanish. Parizha Aires Criozhos.”

  “Damn it!” Adara said. “I knew that.”

  Jack grinned. “How long have you been awake?”

  “Since lemon-cucumber ice cream,” Chavez said. He opened one eye a crack and shook his head at Sherman. “Don’t tell me that’s seriously a thing.”

  “Anyway,” Adara said, “of course we’ll stay glued to Vincent Chen, but I’m thinking the dinner is a likely place to gather intel. Maybe we can go there tonight and put up a listening device or two.”

  “I’m on board with that,” Midas said.

  Jack looked out the window at the plane’s shadow drifting over a lumpy layer of clouds. “Or maybe Chen’s just interested in one of the players—not the dinner meeting.”

  “That’s true,” Adara said.

  “Whatever the case may be,” Chavez said. “The Chinese delegation being here is too big a coincidence.” He leaned forward, rubbing his face with both hands. “Lisanne, you’ve squared away a couple rental cars?”

  “I have,” Robertson said. “They’ll be waiting for you at the airport when we land.”

  “Thank you,” Chavez said. “We’ll pull small arms from the bulkheads after we clear customs.”

  Midas gave him a hearty thumbs-up.

  “Roger that, boss.”

  In the past, it had been a relatively rare occurrence for Campus members to carry firearms on a surveillance op—whether in or out of the United States. It was uncommon for intelligence officers to go armed, and Gerry Hendley thought it put them in too much jeopardy of getting jammed up by the local police. But surveillance often morphed into something more sinister, and the times that the team needed and didn’t have a firearm seemed to happen with greater and greater frequency.

  Chavez had taken his concerns to John Clark—who carried his 1911 ninety-nine percent of the time anyway—and Clark took the issue to Gerry. He reasoned that the work Campus operators did was often “extralegal,” whether on American soil or in another country. There was no reason they should not routinely be prepared to protect themselves during the course of their duties. There were times—certain operations during which a weapon would have proven more dangerous than not—but those would be the exception. Clark’s recommendation, along with a review of the last dozen operations, made Hendley easy to convince.

  Unless otherwise directed, Campus operators were to be armed.

  Unless Otherwise Directed, or UNODIR, was a technique often used from the bottom up, where a field commander or team leader might slip an operational plan outlining his intentions into the CO’s box—at the last minute and marked UNODIR. The team leader could claim due diligence, though, more often than not, the CO didn’t see the ops plan until after the mission was complete. But a UNODIR order coming down from above signified much more than simply allowing Campus operators to go armed most of the time. UNODIR meant that the bosses trusted them to act independently. As former Delta commander Midas Jankowski happily noted: “They’ve taken off our choke chains and let us decide who we’re going to bite.”

  As before, what each Campus operator carried was dictated by personal preference. Ops such as a surveillance in Argentina would require deep concealment. For that, everybody chose the Smith & Wesson M&P Shield in nine-millimeter. In the United States, Caruso and Ryan sometimes carried the same weapon in .40 caliber, but nine-millimeter ammunition was easier to come by in most parts of the world. With a total capacity of nine rounds, the pistols were easy to tuck into a Thunderwear or SmartCarry holster. Both units consisted of a small, flat, and breathable textile pouch on a Velcro belt, worn below the waist and centered low over the groin. These were not designed to be “quick-draw” holsters, but each operator had extensive practice presenting and firing their weapons from this mode of carry. When the need arose, they could do so quickly and safely—almost as fast as they could with an inside-the-waistband or more traditional belt holster.

  No one argued that diminutive M&Ps were optimum primary weapons for going offensive against man-sized targets. Every Campus operator knew from harsh experience that for that they’d use a long gun. But virtually any pistol was better than being a naked clawless bear, so they were happy to have them—along with the hard-earned trust of their superiors.

  Yet trust didn’t mean the lack of pre-op briefing. Ding Chavez was no micromanager—but he was a leader, and he wanted to be certain everyone on his team was on the same page.

  He checked his watch again. “We’ll hit the ground about the time Chen leaves the U.S. That gives us roughly eleven hours to set up in our rooms and run the routes between the airport and downtown before he arrives. Our goal is to gather intel, but we don’t yet know if Chen is running a countersurveillance team—or what the hell he’s even up to for sure. Beyond that, street crime in Buenos Aires isn’t exactly unheard of, and we’re working without a net here. We use the handguns to save our lives, but if you’re mugged by some street thug, I’d much rather see you put a boot up the bastard’s fourth point of contact.”

  “Copy that,” Midas said. Jack and Adara nodded.

  Chavez continued. “Buenos Aires is supposed to be the most European city in South America, but I don’t care to cool my heels in a European jail, either. It goes without saying, but we’ll keep everything in our pants unless they’re absolutely needed.”

  The others, including Lisanne, exchanged glances, stifling laughter.

  “Of course, boss,” Midas said.

  “Righto,” Adara said.

  “Shut up,” Chavez said, leaning back in his chair again. “I’m still asleep.”

  31

  It was just after four p.m. when Moco Goya parked his blue Chevy S-10 pickup nine houses down from the FBI bitch’s house on Buttermilk Circle. Zambrano had sent a kid to watch her, and he said she must have knocked off work early, because she was already home. The kid was born without a right hand. He was eager to get some trigger time, but Zambrano said he should be a lookout for a while. Everyone called the kid Chueco, or “crooked”—what you called a lefty. It was weird that the kid wasn’t parked out front like he was supposed to be. Lucky for him, Zambrano didn’t know he’d abandoned his post. He must have gone for a Coke or something. It didn’t matter. Moco didn’t need him anyway. He had Gusano, the village idiot.

  The Worm sat in the passenger seat, gaping at the rows and rows of fancy homes like he’d never seen a nice house before. Moco cursed himself every time he brought the slow-witted sicario along—until the shooting started. Idiot or not, the Worm was a killing machine. In more than a dozen hits, Moco had never seen him hesitate. It was just getting to that point
that was tedious.

  Gusano turned and blinked like some kind of tree sloth. “¡Güey! What do you think these houses cost?”

  Moco just shook his head and got out of the truck. Gusano was like a little kid. If you answered one question, he would only come up with another.

  The houses were big, though probably not too expensive in the great scheme of things. An FBI agent lived here, after all, and she couldn’t be knocking down enough to buy one of the real McMansions that were springing up all over North Dallas. These brick monstrosities had high roofs and wooden privacy fences to keep the neighbors from snooping on one another, but they were pretty much all the same, with a rock wall here or a wood panel there to give off the illusion that the developer had used more than four different blueprints. A wide concrete walking trail ran behind the houses on this street, winding along a low creek choked with cottonwood trees and impenetrable tangles of mustang grapevines. The developer probably advertised it as a greenbelt and the homeowners got a healthy charge in their yearly association dues for the privilege of living next to a swamp that the developer couldn’t build on anyway.

  No, the neighborhood around Buttermilk Circle wasn’t exactly wealthy, but it was rich enough that Moco and Gusano couldn’t just walk around without looking like they had a reason to be there. A couple Mexicans pushing lawn mowers for a bunch of white Texans was stereotypical—but Moco wanted to blend in, not climb up the social ladder.

  It was warm, but Moco had fastened the top button on his Western shirt in order to hide most of the Santa Muerte tattoo. Gusano had a similar tattoo, but it was on his back, so a T-shirt was enough to hide his.

  Moco opened the dented tailgate and slid out two treated two-by-six pieces of lumber before climbing into the bed and guiding the greasy lawn mower down the makeshift ramps. He wasn’t even sure the old thing would run. Gusano grabbed a Weed Eater and the red gas can that contained their guns. As slow as he was, the Worm had figured out on his own that a five-gallon fuel jug could hold two TEC-9 machine pistols, two Glocks, and a break-open shotgun with both barrels sawed down to ten inches. He’d cut the red plastic with a jigsaw and then used a piano hinge and a couple hasps to keep his new gun vault closed while he carried it. The hasps were visible, but cops wouldn’t even pay attention to a fuel jug.