The Polaris Protocol pl-5

by Brad Taylor

  45

  We sprinted to the balcony, me screaming into the radio, “Koko, Koko, stop what you’re doing. Do not go any deeper into the barrio.”

  “Pike, I’ve got my brother in sight! He’s being pushed forward by a bald guy who looks like the devil.”

  Christ. I knew it would do no good trying to get her to stop. Which left me running after her. I tossed the key fob for the BMW to Blood and said, “Get that car out and shadow us north.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Chase her crazy ass.”

  I gave a SITREP on the radio, getting everyone moving north, the dismounts going to Decoy’s vehicle and Blood inside the BMW, paralleling my line of march, then took off out the balcony, jumping roof to roof.

  One building over I saw Jennifer behind some concrete bricks, trading shots with someone on the other side. I jumped the gap and slid in behind her while she was in the process of reloading. She freaked out at my sudden appearance, trying to take my head off. I blocked the strike and slammed her against the brick.

  I said, “What part of ‘stop what you’re doing’ do you not understand?”

  “Pike, my brother is on the next roof. I saw him. He’s with the guy shooting back.”

  I peeked over the wall and saw three men running.

  Shit.

  I said, “Cover me. Do not move until I’m covering you. Do you understand?”

  She nodded and I leapt up, giving chase. I reached the next building and jumped over the small gap, landing in another makeshift terrace with an old couple looking like they were enjoying the excitement and ignoring the fact that bullets were flying. I vaulted over a low wall, crashed through a clothesline, and heard a shot snap past my head.

  I flattened behind the cinder blocks and heard Jennifer return fire, hoping she was taking the time to aim. I pulled up, getting my pistol over the brick and centering my sight post, seeing one man with a gun flanked by two men crouching with their hands over their heads. I radioed, “Jennifer, move.”

  The distance was way outside the envelope for a surgical shot from a handgun, but all I wanted to do was get him to quit shooting back. He cracked a bullet our way and I held high to compensate for the drop of the .45-caliber slug. The round impacted the brick right next to his head, smacking him with spall. He recoiled from the spray of brick, then kicked the other two men. They jumped to the next building.

  Jennifer went by me without slowing down, leaping from cinder block to tin roof, closing the gap. I jumped up as well, falling in behind her. She cleared the next building, falling onto the same roof as the men, the drop causing her to roll on the tar-covered concrete. As the gunman raised his pistol, I took a knee and fired a double tap that went wide. He squeezed the trigger at the same time and the man to his left slammed into his arms, throwing the shot into space.

  The gunman screamed and turned the pistol onto Jennifer’s savior. The man backed up with his hands out, shouting something I couldn’t understand. He reached the edge of the building and fell backward just as the pistol went off.

  Jennifer screamed, racing to the edge while firing at the gunman with an off-hand hold. He ducked, kicking the final man in the ass as Jennifer’s rounds pinged the cinder block around him, and they jumped to the next roof. Jennifer looked down to the street, holstered her pistol, and flung herself over the parapet. The last thing I saw was her hands on the ledge, then they disappeared.

  I leapt across, saw the gunman fleeing with the final man, and let him go. I raced to the edge and leaned over. Seven feet below me was a balcony, with Jennifer holding Jack in her arms, putting pressure on a shoulder wound that had already coated his shirt with blood.

  I dropped to the balcony, seeing a horrified family inside, all cowering on the couch. I showed my pistol and shook my head at them, then went to Jennifer.

  She said, “He’s hit bad. He’s hit bad. He’s bleeding out.”

  I moved her hand and smiled for the first time. Yeah, he was hit, but it wasn’t bad. Well, not bad as far as gunshots go. He’d have more danger from infection at the hospital than the wound itself.

  I said, “Keep up pressure,” then keyed my radio, vectoring in everyone to my position. “Jackpot. I say again, jackpot. Need exfil and I don’t know my exact position. Somewhere north of the market right next to Trabajo Avenue. Need medical ASAP. Precious cargo is wounded.”

  Decoy came on. “I got your position on the phone. I’m north, headed your way.”

  “Who do you have with you?”

  “Me and Knuckles.”

  “Need more room. Blood, status?”

  “Coming in hot right now. BMW seems to get everyone out of the way. Be there in thirty seconds.”

  Five minutes later we were on the street with a crowd of people starting to circle. I shouted at Blood, “How much money you got?”

  He said, “Not enough to get these guys to quit, but we have a couple of garbage bags in the back we need to dump for space anyway. They’re full of watches and shit.”

  I pulled them out, surveying the crowd. One man was in front of the others, holding a rusty crowbar and looking like a badass. I walked up to him and said, “Let it go.”

  Of course, he didn’t speak a lick of English. He raised the crowbar and I dumped the bag in front of him. When the watches, rings, and other bling spilled around his feet, he lowered his weapon, looking confused.

  I swept my hand above the loot and said, “All yours.”

  Once I tossed the other bag on the ground, they started jostling with one another, and we were on the way to a hospital with Jack bleeding all over the red leather seats and Jennifer hyperventilating over his wounds.

  His eyes fluttered open for a moment, and he gained consciousness and tried to sit up. Jennifer stopped him, cooing. When he recognized her voice, he slurred, “Jennifer? Are you dead too?”

  She laughed for the first time and said, “No. And neither are you.”

  He leaned back and said, “What are you doing here? Did Mom send you?”

  She smiled. “Yes. Mom sent me. Along with some friends.”

  He chuckled, then grimaced from the pain it caused. “Friends, huh? Who on earth did you convince to come down here to this hellhole?”

  “Some people who don’t mind a little trouble.” She caught my eye and smiled. “Someone who does what’s right.”

  He closed his eyes and said, “Does what’s right… I knew that would make a difference.”

  She said, “What’s that mean?”

  He didn’t answer and she let it go.

  She held his hand and leaned forward, saying, “Thank you, guys. Thank you for doing this. I owe you big-time.”

  Blood said, “You don’t owe me shit. I get a paycheck.”

  Now that we were relatively safe, I let my anger spill out over her activities in the last hour. I said, “Blood may not care, but you sure as hell owe me. Jesus, you ignore every single order I give, running into a Korean Mafia house and slinging lead with no backup whatsoever. What the hell were you thinking?”

  Blood said, “Hey, cut her some slack. She was rescuing the PC. You’d do the same in her shoes.”

  “I would not. No way would I do something that stupid.”

  His face split into the same smile he always used when he knew he was right, a disarming bit of trickery he’d learned at the agency. “You do that all the damn time. The only difference is the person you’re ignoring is a continent away.”

  I harrumphed, then saw Jennifer returning Blood’s smile with one of her own. So damn proud she’d ignored me. I tried to maintain my anger, but it was a lost cause. Her actions had saved her brother, after all. He’d have been gone for good if she hadn’t raced off on her own, and being mad about her actions was a little selfish. I certainly couldn’t argue with success, and whenever I’d done something like she had, I didn’t smile because I was proud of ignoring the command. I smiled because I’d succeeded in the mission, which was something I was always th
rowing in Kurt Hale’s face.

  Now it was being thrown into mine.

  I poked one more time, because I didn’t like being treated like the damn command I always flouted. “Well, I’m glad we got your brother, but let’s hope he can do something against the threat. You were sure he was the Holy Grail, and apparently so was the Oversight Council.”

  Jennifer got a little truculent at that. “I am sure he can, but this mission isn’t a failure if he can’t. Is it? Do you think that?”

  She was staring daggers at me, and I heard the unspoken end of her words: Do you think that, or does the asshole team leader? I saw Blood catch the look in the rearview, a question on his face, wondering. Someone else reading the tea leaves like Knuckles. Seeing things beyond a simple team member — team leader relationship. I honestly hated how smart these bastards were. Nothing got past them for long.

  I backtracked and said, “No, of course not. I just meant I hope he’s got some useful information. That’s all.”

  Blood said, “Check in your foot well. I gave the car a cursory once-over for bad shit, found the goody bags in back and something else.”

  “What?” I started rooting underneath my seat. “What did you find?”

  “A digital video recorder and a directional microphone. No idea what’s on it.”

  I pulled it out, put the headphones on my ears, and started listening. Jennifer saw my eyes squint and said, “What is it?”

  I held a finger in the air and said, “Shhh.” I listened a little bit more, then turned around, seeing Jack unconscious in the back, Jennifer keeping pressure on his wound. She waited. I continued listening until she couldn’t take it. She said, “Damn it, what are you hearing?”

  I pulled the headset off and said, “I take back everything I just said about your jackass maneuver.”

  “What?”

  “Your brother just bought us a ticket to the dance.”

  46

  The sicario finished taping Booth’s ankles to the metal rod he’d broken from the towel rack, pinning them to the bar. He pulled the feet until they hung over the bathtub, then taped the bar to the ceramic edge. Now stretched out like a calf for slaughter, his hands chained to a cast-iron pipe that jutted out from under the sink, Booth began to writhe up and down, but he’d waited too long. His eyes wild, he grunted through the gag in his mouth, only growing still when the sicario turned to face him, a demonic vision that caused instant compliance.

  “You understand the reason I have you like this, correct?”

  Booth shook his head violently side to side.

  “I want to know who those men were who chased us. What they represent. I don’t expect you to tell me the truth right away, but you will. Everyone does when I start peeling the soles of the feet. It’s very, very painful.”

  The sicario pointed to a bottle of bleach on the counter. “I prefer the bathtub because it’s much easier to clean. The bleach flushes all traces of blood down the drain, but I’m told it burns like fire on open wounds.”

  A low moan escaped Booth’s throat, barely penetrating the rag stuffed in his mouth. The sicario jerked it out and said, “Well?”

  “I have no idea! Please, dear God, I don’t know. Why would I? I’m from America! Maybe they’re friends of Carlos! You killed him. Not me.”

  “If that’s true, then there was no reason to bring you here. I should have left you dead like the other man on the roof.”

  After shooting their way clear of the team following them, the sicario had dragged Booth down a rickety flight of metal stairs to a balcony and pushed him through into a shabby apartment. The family inside never even saw the pistol in his hand. They took one look at his visage and disappeared into another room.

  They reached the street unmolested. The sicario jabbed Booth in the kidney with the barrel of his weapon, pushing him back into the crowded market. Burrowing through the mass of people, they left the street vendors behind and entered a warehouse district. The sicario saw two men carrying a pallet toward a dingy, beat-up van and waited until they’d finished loading. When one moved to the driver’s door, he approached and did nothing more than show his pistol. The men fled, running down the street toward the market. He’d thrown Booth in the back, spending a minute tying his hands with loose cord. Satisfied Booth couldn’t interfere, he’d driven to a run-down hotel five miles away.

  While he weaved through the traffic the gunfight had spun relentlessly in his head, rattling around like a loose marble in a can. Initially, when the shooting started, he’d thought it was a setup by the Koreans, but they’d allowed him to leave without incident, instead sending men to the gunfire in the market. They’d also seemed genuinely pleased at the car he’d brought, along with the loot.

  That meant it was someone from Sinaloa or Los Zetas, but the man and woman on the roof were gringos, and the woman could shoot. The people chasing him had skill. They had reminded him of his Special Forces unit in Guatemala, one calmly firing while another moved under protection. He’d never seen such a thing with the brutish killers employed by Sinaloa and instinctively knew there was no way it was a cartel. It was something else.

  Which left the fat gringo taped to the bathtub.

  The sicario said, “You gave me the answer I expected. All that remains is to see how much I peel before you tell me the truth.”

  He pulled a folding straight razor from his pocket and opened it, watching for a reaction. His captive saw the blade and began trembling as if he were having a seizure, causing the chain on his hands to rattle against the pipe. He fixated on the blade; then his eyes rolled back in his head and his body grew still.

  The sicario sat back and tapped the razor against his palm, considering. While he had no compunction about mutilating the man, such work was tiring and messy, and should be done only with a purpose in mind. He knew the power torture held and had used it many times to elicit confessions. In this case, he needed real information, and the time and trouble of the work had to be measured against what he would gain. The gringo clearly had never been in any bit of danger in his entire soft life. The sight of the blade alone caused him to pass out, like a woman seeing blood.

  But that may mean nothing.

  He stuffed the rag back into Booth’s mouth, then filled a glass with water and splashed it into his face. When Booth awoke, he rolled left and right as if he was confused, then saw the sicario standing over him. He began to shriek through the gag. The sicario raised his finger to his lips, and Booth went silent. The sicario removed the rag.

  “You ready to tell me what I want to know?”

  Booth began crying, weeping so hard his lungs starting hitching, the tears mixing with his sweat and the phlegm rolling from his nose. He choked out, “All I came here to do was to give up the POLARIS protocol. I don’t know anything about what’s going on between your cartels. I don’t know who those people shooting at us were. I met Carlos in Colorado. He was supposed to pay me money if I gave him the protocol, but you killed him. You can have it. You take it. Just let me go.”

  The sicario gazed down at the blubbering mass of humanity and decided he was telling the truth. He’d heard what Carlos had discussed with the three men from the airport. He knew Carlos was trying to sell what this man was bringing. Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with drugs, which raised doubt in his mind that the man and woman who chased them were working with Booth.

  Why would the US government set up some elaborate sting in Mexico for something that had none of the trappings of the drug trade? No guns, no precursor chemicals, no transfer of aircraft or boats, and certainly no actual drugs. Just some weird protocol that was worth money to foreigners. It was too complex a trap even for the Americans, and this man was clearly way out of his league. He didn’t even pretend to know a script to recite.

  It didn’t answer the question about the team who had chased them, but ultimately that didn’t matter. Time was all that counted now. The quicker he began his run to America, the better. He had captured Bo
oth for the cash he represented, but in so doing he had somehow drawn the focus of another group. Leaving behind all of this as soon as he could gave him his surest chance of survival, even without any money. It was too bad for Booth, but at least the sicario would now make it painless. If anything, Booth should have felt thankful that he didn’t experience the flaying of his feet before he died.

  The sicario peeled the tape from the bathtub, leaving Booth’s ankles trapped on the towel rod, then unlocked his hands from the sink pipe, cinching the handcuffs behind Booth’s back once he was done. Booth did nothing to resist, simply staring at the sicario with wide eyes. He rotated the body around and hoisted him into the tub, grunting with the exertion of getting Booth’s pudgy carcass over the edge.

  He dropped Booth on his back in the tub, his head against the far side and his legs bent at the knees, his feet hanging over the edge and touching the tile of the bathroom floor. The sicario moved his head until it was resting near the drain, then raised the straight razor. Booth began grunting through the gag, twisting his head side to side.

  The sicario hesitated, then pulled the rag from his mouth, a string of drool trailing from the cloth to his lip.

  “You have something you wish to tell me?”

  “Yes! Yes! Please don’t do this. I came because Carlos asked. I understand he was your enemy, but that doesn’t make me the same. Please. You kill me and you lose the POLARIS protocol. My laptop is encrypted. I am the only one who can work it.”

  The sicario gazed at his beast for slaughter, considering, then grabbed the hair of the head and twisted until the neck was exposed. Booth began shrieking, “You wanted money from the BMW, but you didn’t get it. Sell the protocol! Sell it! You kill me and you’re killing more money than you would ever have!”

  The sicario paused again. The sacrificial lamb was only trying to save his miserable life, but what he said was true. He’d lost all money for the journey north with the interrupted transfer of the BMW and other trinkets he’d taken from the Zetas house. The only things he had were the two bundles of bills from the office, and that would last about a month, provided he lived frugally. He’d heard Carlos talking about a great deal of cash for the purchase of the protocol. Maybe a day or two to investigate would be worth it, even with the mysterious team on the loose.