by Lou Dobbs
He’d cringed when he pulled off Anapra Road onto a dusty trail. His beloved Cadillac rattled and bumped all the way. Now he worried about the trip back.
There was no effective border fence here. In fact, there was almost nothing except the battered remnants of the fence between the two countries and a dry riverbed that rose to a low hill on the Mexican side. The border from extreme western Texas to almost San Diego had questionable fencing and depended on the open, inhospitable desert to keep people on their respective sides of the border. Cash did worry about the sophisticated electronic surveillance and ground sensors, but he didn’t plan to be here long enough to give the Border Patrol a chance to dispatch a car.
The Rio Grande River was curving north this far west and was nowhere in sight. Cash had been careful to position Dr. Martinez so he could see his homeland and realize that if he spilled his guts on every issue Cash asked about there was at least a chance he could go home again.
The whole idea was a better alternative than torture for both the doctor and Cash. The doctor had been most forthcoming so far, and now Cash was down to one vital question. “Do you know where Eric is?”
“Enrique?”
“The computer guy, Eric.” Cash worked hard to hide his frustration, mostly as a way to keep Ari quiet. The wounded man had been in favor of shooting Martinez as soon as they saw him, then going in to get treatment for his injured arm. Now, more than an hour later, Ari was approaching desperation for what Cash knew would only be a couple dozen stitches. The towel he had wrapped around the wound was hardly leaking any blood at all now.
Cash repeated the question, “Do you know where Eric is?”
“No.” The doctor shook his head and looked at the ground. That was his tell. Until now Martinez had looked Cash in the eye every time he answered a question.
“I don’t want to get rough with you, Dr. Martinez, but you could not imagine how important it is right now for you to tell me what you know about Eric. You’ve already been through enough today. I promise it won’t compare to what’s about to happen to you if you don’t tell me everything you know.”
Dr. Martinez looked at him but hesitated.
Now Ari stepped forward, clearly anxious to end this so he could seek medical attention. Cash didn’t care if the interrogation went on all night and Ari died of blood loss, but he did need answers, so he let the little Israeli throw the fear of God into Martinez. The rumors had run wild about Eric, the computer guy, and Cash’s boss was bat-shit about finding him. He wasn’t on any of the books and wasn’t listed as an official employee at the company. Cash knew Eric a little bit from all the times he’d crossed into Mexico and back, but they had barely spoken. He was on the last run but had disappeared in the confusion. Cash wished his boss had been honest about Eric’s significance, but the company was probably worried about the scam to extort money spreading further. It had already included Vinnie DiMetti and Eric. Cash wondered what the link between the two men was. Vinnie never mentioned that he knew Eric. The computer guy never spoke to Vinnie while crossing the border. What kind of information could he have? Cash wished he was told more about the reasons for his assignments sometimes.
Ari still hung menacingly close to Martinez, but he took no action.
Now Cash put on a big act, saying, “If you don’t know where Eric is, then you’re not much use to us anymore.” He made a show of lifting his shirt and reaching slowly for his Colt. He suppressed a smile as the action took effect on the terrified doctor.
Martinez held his hands up in front of him as if fending off a blow and screamed, “Wait, wait!” He had to take a second to catch his breath. “I have a cell number for him.”
Cash nodded to Ari, who dug in his pocket for a little notepad and pencil. They waited as the doctor wrote out the phone number.
Now Ari looked up at Cash and said, “That’s it. We don’t have any more time to screw with this guy. I need a doctor.”
Martinez said, “I am a doctor.”
“No, I need a nice Jewish doctor.”
Cash wanted to laugh at the comment, but he agreed with Ari. It wasn’t fair to let this thing drag out. He turned and nodded to Ari, then said to Dr. Martinez, “Cross here and never come back to the U.S.” He waited as the doctor took a moment to comprehend what he had just been told. The doctor nodded nervously, turned, and scurried toward the imaginary line between Mexico and the U.S.
In the time it took him to run thirty yards and navigate the dry creek bed, Ari had popped the trunk on the Cadillac CTS, reached in, and retrieved a .308 hunting rifle. The sleek Remington had no scope, but anything less than a hundred yards didn’t require one. He leaned on the edge of the heavy car and sighted in on the fleeing doctor. As soon as Martinez had made it to the far side of the dry creek and climbed the first few feet of a small rise, Ari fired one time.
The bullet struck the ground at the apex of the little hill right next to Dr. Martinez, startling him.
Cash mumbled, “Aim lower and to your left.” He could see Ari already making the slight adjustment, then squeezing the trigger twice. The heavy rifle bucked in his hands, and the doctor was knocked off his feet and fell out of sight. This was sweet. The body was in Mexico, so there would be little investigation. Things were looking up.
* * *
Tom Eriksen was exhausted and needed sleep, but he couldn’t relax until he felt better about John Houghton. He decided to cruise past John’s apartment complex one more time, and if he wasn’t there then he would call John’s supervisor and tell him how worried he was. The roads were empty after ten o’clock, and the sound of his pistol seemed to still echo in Eriksen’s ears.
He had an odd emotional reaction to the shooting earlier in the evening. He had handled it well, and it made him feel good about himself. He had proven he could stand up to danger and handle the consequences. He was still in shock that the IG had let him off so quickly. He tried not to think what petty retribution his supervisor, Mike Zara, might try to exact over the next week.
The incident also made him realize that somewhere in the back of his mind he had expected to see that kind of action on a regular basis when he joined the FBI. He knew it was the influence of too many TV shows and novels, but it had still caused a great deal of disappointment when he came to grips with what the job really entailed. He’d been mistaken and paying for that mistake ever sense.
He turned the corner to John’s apartment building and recognized he was excited to tell his partner what had happened. He appreciated the older veteran’s perspective and sought his approval whenever something unusual happened. But as the apartment complex came into view, he saw the emergency vehicles and felt a lump in his stomach.
He parked his car and jogged to the cop standing in the parking lot as two paramedics loaded someone into an ambulance. Eriksen held up his credential case with the badge on the outside and said, “What happened here?”
The cop took a second to make out the FBI badge and said, “Someone found a body in the laundry room. They thought he might still be alive, and we called for fire rescue.”
“Do you know the victim’s name?”
The cop shook his head. “We haven’t identified him yet.”
Eriksen nodded, then pushed past the cop and rushed to the paramedic, holding up his badge as he approached. “Do you have any idea what happened?”
The young, lean African American paramedic shook his head and said, “No, sir. He was expired when we got here. We had to move him from the cramped corner of the laundry room to check for vitals and see if there was anything we could do. The cops told us by then we had ruined any potential crime scene and had us load him into the ambulance.”
Eriksen said, “I might be able to identify him.”
The paramedic didn’t hesitate to nod at the ambulance driver over his shoulder and have him wait as he walked to the rear and opened the gate. It only took a second for Eriksen to look inside. He turned to the paramedic and nodded. “His name is John Hough
ton.”
His world was starting to spin.
SEVENTEEN
Tom Eriksen drove around El Paso in a daze before he headed to his apartment in the suburbs. The town had a certain comfortable quality, something that was incredible when considering the violent, sprawling city just across the border. Even most of the streetlights were small and decorative, unlike a lot of the tall, practical cement light poles in many American cities.
He wasn’t even sure how long he had driven as all kinds of thoughts raced through his mind, after he’d realized there was nothing else he could do at John’s apartment.
He’d spoken briefly to an El Paso police detective who had come to the scene and made a quick assessment based on all the prescriptions and the empty alcohol bottles that John’s death was an accident. All homicide detectives wanted to clear cases quickly, and accidents were the fastest way to keep their stats up. Based on John’s position in law enforcement, Eriksen had convinced the detective not to jump to any conclusions and at least wait until after the autopsy to make a determination about the cause of death.
The paramedics on the scene had been pretty sharp. When Eriksen had wondered aloud how John’s body had ended up in the laundry room, one of the veteran paramedics said, “Drug interactions are a crazy thing. I saw he had a prescription for Ambien. The sleeping pills can do weird shit to people and could explain why your friend’s body was found in the laundry room. There is no telling what was going on in his head.”
The hardest thing for Eriksen to deal with was the sudden appearance of John’s wife and two teenage kids. They had been called to John’s apartment by the fire department, but only told there had been an accident. It was the worst kind of bureaucratic foul-up. Eriksen sat and tried to comfort John’s wife, although he had only met her once before, and even then briefly. The kids, a young man about sixteen and a girl a few years younger, sat in shock after they discovered the truth. He stayed with them until more relatives came and drove them home.
It was well after midnight when Eriksen pulled into his apartment behind the house in an area locals called Sun Ridge South. Like most of El Paso’s neighborhoods, it was flat with some green lawns and a few tall trees. A sedan was parked in his usual spot, causing him to pull his government-issued Taurus to the side of the house. The events of the night and the strange car set off the internal alarm common to everyone in law enforcement. They had all read too many bulletins about home invasions and burglars to dismiss anything out of the ordinary. He stood in the shadow of the bushes and listened for a moment but heard nothing unusual. As Eriksen eased past the car, he moved his right hand, ready to slide the Glock out of the holster on his hip. His left hand brushed the hood of the car and felt just a trace of heat from the engine. The car had been parked for at least an hour.
As he stepped around the corner of the little apartment he saw someone move on his narrow front porch.
* * *
Eric Sidle huddled in his cheap, dingy hotel room. The smell of urine in the hallway had almost sent him back to his sister’s house, but he didn’t want to put her in any danger. He was at least safe here. No one knew he was here, and he didn’t have to give his name when he registered and paid cash. The room only contained a double bed, a scratched and scarred dresser with a tube TV on top, and a small table and chair. The bathroom looked like it belonged in a dorm room, with a minuscule stand-up shower, a rust-stained sink, and a toilet tucked between them.
He had seen the news story about the father and daughter gunned down in the middle of El Paso. The kind of stuff just didn’t happen here. Juárez, just a few miles south, saw violence like that every day, with more than fifteen hundred murders each year. It was dubbed the most violent city in the world. But El Paso prided itself on its safe reputation and small-town values. Later in the evening, the news stories linked the deaths to another murder close by. The names were not released, but Eric knew his friend Luis Martinez lived in the area, and he’d been unable to reach him at the number the doctor had provided.
The sick feeling in Eric’s stomach replaced the thrill he had been experiencing, scheming to play both his employers against each other. It hadn’t even been his idea, but now that he was involved, he felt like he owned it. The news of the dead people and a sense of responsibility had thrown a wet blanket on his enthusiasm. He didn’t even know why he was doing it for sure. Money was a motivation, but he could make plenty of money at a legitimate computer job. He had gone to Northwestern, for Christ’s sake. He might not have been able to enjoy college football but at least he could look down his nose at most other midwestern schools.
The whole thing simply started as a challenge. He loved challenges. Most engineers did. The company he worked for ignored the greater part of his skills, and if he used them to help himself and his family, he didn’t see the harm. But now Luis Martinez, if he was one of the dead people, made him see he might be in over his head.
Eric wondered who else could be in danger. His sister knew what was going on because he didn’t feel right about living in her house and not being honest with her. Eric also thought that she would be the one in his family who could most use some money. He planned to pay off his parents’ house back in Chicago and help his little brother with his expenses at Notre Dame, but his sister was his main concern right now.
He wondered if it was too late to wrap this up quickly with his U.S. employers and flee before Pablo Piña decided he needed Eric dead as well. He stood up and flipped off the TV on the way to the kitchen to grab a beer and consider his options.
* * *
Cash suppressed a smile every time Ari jumped or grimaced while the young doctor stitched up the gash in his arm. The small examination room was neat and clean with a hard wooden chair for a family member to sit on in the corner. He’d finally convinced Ari that they should go to a walk-in clinic where there would be fewer questions about his injury and why it was several hours old. His instinct had been correct when the young Indian doctor had accepted two hundred dollars plus the normal fee to work on the injury and not ask any questions at all.
Cash had considered giving him an extra hundred bucks to not use anesthetic. It would be a good chance to see if Ari was as tough as he claimed to be. But now he realized that if he had to face armed men again, maybe Ari wasn’t such a bad guy to have on his side, even though his marksmanship at close quarters hadn’t really impressed Cash at all. When it came down to it, Ari could be trusted to act, and he was too stupid to tell the police anything if he was ever caught.
Cash knew he had to have a sit-down with his boss sometime soon. Tomorrow, if possible. He needed to know everyone involved and whether he would have to face any more Mexicans with giant, silenced pistols again.
He wondered if maybe it wasn’t time to find a new job.
* * *
Tom Eriksen turned and crouched slightly as he peered up onto the porch through the darkness. Before he drew his pistol he saw a sandaled foot kick up near the rocking chair that had been on the porch before he moved in. He stepped around the corner of the building, allowing light from the rear of the main house to illuminate the porch.
Katharine Gleason rocked back and forth easily in the chair, unaware that he was watching.
He cleared his throat as he stepped onto the porch and feigned surprise when she stood from the chair.
Kat said, “I’m so sorry about John. I just came over because I thought you might not want to be alone. I knew if I called, you’d act like any other macho FBI agent and say everything was all right.”
Instead of denying the accusation he stepped toward her and took her in his arms. She kissed him and leaned her head against his chest.
She was absolutely right. If she had called he would’ve told her he needed to be alone, but now that she was here he had never felt more relief in his entire life.
EIGHTEEN
Tom Eriksen was stuck in that pleasant dream world between sleep and wakefulness. The soft couch gave him no inte
rest in starting the day. He felt the warm haze of spending the evening with Katharine Gleason even in this foggy mental land.
She’d listened while Eriksen spouted John’s crazy conspiracy theories, but clearly couldn’t get on board with Eriksen’s idea that he’d been murdered. Kat had a different slant on things and said, “I understand you’re upset, and I heard John was a great guy, but he was a serious drinker and he had, like, six prescriptions that didn’t mix with alcohol or each other.”
Eriksen thought back to what the paramedic had said and realized she made sense as he started to calm down.
He respected her insight. She didn’t try to be something she wasn’t. She was essentially a very bright engineer working with communications equipment with the National Security Agency. Kat had no experience with the intrigues that could be involved in federal law enforcement and spying agencies. He had heard over the years, before the attacks of 9/11, when the CIA had faced hard times and the Cold War had fizzled into a little-cheered victory for the West, that the new spy agency was the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
At the time, when the drug war was near its height, DEA agents were the ones using high-level informants to infiltrate drug gangs every bit as well funded as countries. They were the new spymasters as they sent armies of paid informers into every country. They also had the muscle, with more than three thousand armed and well-trained agents, to support this shadow army. In contrast, the NSA was more of a collection of very bright geeks than tough field agents who were trained at bases on the East Coast.
They had talked through the night. He told her about growing up in Bowie, Maryland, with his brothers and sister. Saying it out loud made him realize how great his childhood was. His brothers had made him tough, and his sister had taught him patience. It made Eriksen recall something his father had said to him when he turned fourteen.
Eriksen couldn’t understand why his sister was crying about a boy who had broken up with her. His father had said that he should always treat women the way he wanted his sister to be treated. The simple statement had taken root in him. It’d hurt him so badly to see his sister cry, even if it was only for one evening and the kid turned out to be a jerk, that he and his brothers tormented the boy for years afterward.
