“Not everybody, Mike,” Emily said. “Colonel D’Ambrose has been working tirelessly on this for the last three months. Before that, he and his men at the Joint Special Operations Command helped redefine counterinsurgency tactics in Iraq, bringing in the CIA and NSA to sort through the electronic pocket litter that the Special Forces teams found on the battlefield. There’s no one better on the planet to head up this kind of international manhunt.”
The colonel smiled as he wiped his mouth.
“Thanks for the defense, Emily, but Detective Bennett here is more correct than he knows. I’m disgusted, too, Detective. We needed to keep our house clean, but we didn’t. Letting things go to the point where the exterminator has to come to your house is pretty damn embarrassing.”
CHAPTER 33
After we finished eating, D’Ambrose left for a meeting, and Parker took me over to Building 14. The huge open room on the ground floor was being used by D’Ambrose’s JSOC guys as the multiple-agency task force command center.
There were desks everywhere, several large PowerPoint boards and flat screens, a podium. Everyone on the task force must have been taking a break to eat, because except for a couple of soldiers running some wires through the drop ceiling, we were alone.
We grabbed a couple of coffees from a well-stocked table, and I followed Emily over to a desk.
“We found this footage two days ago at a safe house we raided with the federales in Durango,” Emily said, tapping at a laptop as we sat. “It’s of a dinner Perrine held for his top cartel people. We had it closed captioned. You have to take a look at this.”
I let out a breath as Perrine appeared on the screen. He was wearing an impeccably tailored tuxedo, standing at a podium in what looked to be some kind of ballroom.
The last time I had laid eyes on him, he was in a prison jumpsuit, escaping from a Lower Manhattan courthouse in a construction-crane basket. It made my blood boil to see him back in his stylish finery, dressed to the nines again.
I also noticed that he had gotten his nose fixed. Which sucked. I was the one who had broken it for him in a scuffle we’d had before I placed him under arrest. I had the funny feeling we would have another scuffle before this thing was done. But is that a good thing? I wondered.
I watched as the psychopathic murderer smiled pleasantly, adjusted the mike, and cleared his throat.
“I see myself as a historical figure,” Perrine said from the dais without the slightest hint of irony. “Like Pancho Villa or Che Guevara or the great Simón Bolívar, I am here to continue the Southern Hemisphere’s great tradition of rebellion. Only, I am more honest, more defiant, because I refuse to hide my ambitions behind the bullshit con game that is socialism.
“I do not need to justify my actions. Especially to the Americans. Borders and laws, they cry. Supply and demand is my reply. They disrupt my business while it is their decadent sons and daughters who are my very best customers.
“It is time,” Perrine said. “Time to stop fucking around. That is what I learned during my stay in the great United States. My brief stay.”
The audience broke into applause and uproarious laughter at that one.
I wanted to put my fist through the screen.
“I see the US finally for what it is,” Perrine continued. “Just another rival, just another meddlesome obstacle to our ambitions. Where the Americans are weak, we will show our strength. We will not stop until the border itself is meaningless. We will spur on chaos until it is manifest everywhere, until even the American authorities are as cowed as the Mexican ones. Then and only then will we have free rein.
“And by we, be sure that I do not mean old Mexico. I do not mean the sorry downtrodden, the blessed poor. Fuck the forever-useless, sniveling, ever-present poor once and for all, I say.
“By we, I mean you and me-all the people ruthless and lucky enough to be in this room at this present moment. Tout le monde is ours for the taking, my friends! The world is turning, readying itself for new borders, new laws. I say we write them with the blood of our American enemies. What do you say? Who is with me? Who wants to be a billionaire?”
CHAPTER 34
The screen faded to black, and Parker closed the laptop, cutting off the sound of more applause.
“Wow, I’m impressed,” I said. “That has to be the Gettysburg Address of maniacal narco-terrorists.”
Emily nodded. “One of our informants who was at the dinner said that after his speech, Perrine expertly directed a PowerPoint presentation in which a precise military-insurgency plan of attack on the southwest US was laid out,” she said.
“What?” I said, laughing.
Parker nodded somberly.
“I’m not kidding. Like a general, he referred to the cartel’s current troop strengths and provisions, its recruiting efforts. Ho Chi Minh was mentioned often and fondly.”
“Ho Chi Minh? Now, please. I know he’s a threat, Emily, but Perrine’s out of his cocaine-smuggling mind. Or he’s just trying to get his guys going. There’s no way he can operate in the US the way he’s been doing it in Mexico. He knows that would be suicide.
“Believe me, Emily. This guy is smart. You saw him there with his manicure and his silk bespoke attire. His tastes are pure French. He’s a gourmet, a real bon vivant with joie de vivre. He likes being alive.”
“What you say is true, Mike, but he’s making some pretty audacious moves nonetheless,” Emily said. “Those two cops in El Monte were blown to pieces by highly trained paramilitaries-mercenaries, probably. Which is troublesome when you consider that some of our analysts are saying the cartels employ upward of fifty or sixty thousand people.
“Plus, you heard the speech. Drugs seem to be almost beside the point. He’s high on his own power. He seems like he’s drifted from egotistical drug smuggler into megalomaniac world conqueror. He’s French, all right. It seems he thinks he’s Napoleon.”
“You have a point there,” I said.
“Well, the good news is, this really isn’t the first rodeo for the US military against these narco nuts,” Emily said, twirling a pen in her fingers. “In Colombia in the eighties, Pablo Escobar actually went to full-blown war with the Colombian government. He blew up government buildings and an airliner before the Colombians asked for our help. The first George Bush sent in Delta Force, which tracked down the maniac for the Colombian army, who ultimately took him out.”
“You’re right. That’s true,” I said, brightening. “I forgot all about that. You’ve been around awhile, Parker. Were you involved in the Pablo Escobar takedown?”
She turned and stabbed me in the arm with the pen.
“Ow!”
“Screw you, Bennett,” she said, affronted. “I’m younger than you are. In the nineties, I was in high school, dancing to Depeche Mode.”
“It was a joke, Parker,” I said, rubbing my arm.
“About my age,” she said.
“My bad,” I said. “How about a toast?” I said, raising my coffee cup. “To history repeating itself.”
“Hear, hear,” Parker said, tapping Styrofoam. “To Perrine in a body bag.”
CHAPTER 35
The morning after his dad left, Brian Bennett opened his eyes as he heard soft footsteps in the hallway. After a moment, the bedroom door slowly opened and Grandpa Seamus poked his head in.
Uh-oh. Chore time. Has to be, Brian thought, immediately shutting his eyes and making what he hoped was a natural-sounding snore.
“You’re up, Brian. Excellent,” Seamus whispered as he tugged hard on Brian’s earlobe. “Get dressed and grab Eddie and Jane, would you? I need to talk to you goslings in the kitchen about something.”
“Are we in trouble?” Brian whispered back. “I already told Mary Catherine I was sorry about the strike, about a thousand times.”
“No, no. It’s nothing like that,” Seamus said. “I just need to talk to you. You have five minutes. Move your butt.”
Seamus had an apron on over his priest suit and had s
ome scrambled-egg tortillas waiting for them when they entered the kitchen. Brian hesitated at the door when he smelled the bacon. Bacon was trouble. The bribe of bacon meant they were about to be made to do something even more heinous than he had imagined.
“There you are! Carpe diem! Come in now, Brian. Be not afraid,” Seamus said.
“What’s up, Gramps?” Brian said, finally taking a seat.
“Funny you ask that question, Brian,” Seamus said, raising his bacon fork. “I just got a call from my priest friend in town. Father Walter needs help in accomplishing a corporal work of mercy this morning, and I think I’ve found just the people for the job.”
I knew it, Brian thought, rubbing his tired eyes. All aboard. Next stop, Chore City. He wasn’t sure what the word corporal meant, but work was something he had become infinitely familiar with in the family’s rural exile.
“Now,” Seamus said jovially, “who can tell me what the corporal works of mercy are?”
“Visit imprisoned people like us,” Brian mumbled.
“Very good, Brian. Visit the imprisoned. Anyone else?”
“Um, clothe the naked?” Eddie said, trying to keep a straight, pious face, and failing.
“Yes, Eddie. Clothe the naked. Why did I think you of all people would remember that one? Anyone else?”
“Feed the hungry,” Jane said, eyeing the bacon.
“Bingo, Jane. Feed the hungry. That’s the one Father Walter needs our help with. Father just received a large shipment of donated canned goods and needs help with distribution. We have to go to the rectory and run the supplies over to a remote food bank in a tiny, poor part of the county and dole them out. I thought it would be a nice opportunity for the three of you. I know you’ve been complaining about not getting out.”
“But what about Dad?” Eddie said. “Didn’t he say we have to stay on the farm? No exceptions?”
“I’m in charge, Eddie,” Seamus said, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “People need our help, and we’re going to help them. Evil wins when good men do nothing.”
“We’re not men, though, Gramps. We’re kids,” Brian complained. “And I thought you said we weren’t in trouble.”
Seamus smiled as he lifted a pan off the stove and brought it over.
“Thanks for volunteering to help, Brian,” he said as he piled some bacon onto Brian’s plate.
“There’s a special place in heaven for young saints like yourself.”
CHAPTER 36
The food bank was in a little town called Sunnyville, a few miles south of Susanville.
Getting out of the van with Seamus, Jane wondered if the town’s name was supposed to be ironic. Because there wasn’t anything sunny about it. It wasn’t even a town, really. Just a collection of ramshackle houses, a barnlike building that looked like a bar of some kind, and a place that sold snowmobiles and dirt bikes.
What it looked like was something from a serial killer movie, she thought. Right down to the creepy, weird sound of an unseen wind chime tinkling as they got out of the station wagon. Even the shedlike building they used for the food bank looked weird, she thought as she grabbed a case of Chef Boyardee. It looked like a caboose.
The caboose of a train that was smart enough to cut out of this godforsaken place a long, long time ago, Jane thought.
They were going up the stairs with the heavy boxes when she saw that there was another collection of buildings, to the rear of the food bank. It was a trailer park. A huge, excessively run-down one. As she watched, there was a sudden roar, and a heavy woman riding a motorcycle shot out from between two of the decrepit structures.
If they got out of this alive, she’d never complain about the farm again, she decided as she dropped off the cans and went back for more.
It took them about half an hour just to get the boxes inside the food bank caboose and unpacked. The food was mostly divided between canned stuff-Campbell’s soups, SpaghettiOs, Del Monte fruit-and dry goods: macaroni and cheese, ramen noodles, hot cocoa. When they were done arranging the shelves, it looked like a grocery store.
A line of people from the trailer park formed quickly. It was obvious they were in bad straits. Whites, blacks, Hispanics. All of them poor. All of them about as desperate as migrant workers out of work got.
Jane and Eddie ran around behind the counter, putting together the orders, while Seamus and Brian worked clipboards, checking IDs of people who were on the church’s food bank giving list.
They were just about all out of food when the gang of trailer-park kids came around. There were about seven of them, ranging in age from eight to thirteen, as desperate-looking as their parents. They wore filthy T-shirts and jeans, filthy sneakers. One of them, a dopey-looking white kid with an Afro puff of curly brown hair, didn’t even have shoes, Jane noticed in horror from behind the counter.
“Hey, you guys like baseball?” the oldest of them, a short Hispanic kid, said with a nice-enough smile. “I’m Guillermo. We got a little field back here, and we were wondering if you guys wanted to play.”
Before they could answer, Guillermo turned to Seamus, showing him the dinged-up aluminum bat he was holding.
“Would that be OK, Father? Could they play some baseball with us?”
“That would be fine, kids. Just don’t go too far. We’ll be leaving soon enough.”
Jane stood behind the counter, frozen. She stared at her grandfather like he was crazy. She didn’t want to play baseball with California’s version of Children of the Corn. She was twelve! And a girl!
“C’mon, now. Jane, Eddie, c’mon out from behind there,” Seamus said. “You’ve been a big help today. You can play for a little while with them while Brian stays here with me to clean up.”
Jane and Eddie looked at each other.
“Yeah, c’mon,” Guillermo said, patting Eddie on the shoulder as they left the food bank. “It’s this way.”
They went behind the food bank caboose, toward a stand of pines and oaks. Behind about twenty yards of trees was their field. It looked comically bad. There was a flat plain of red dirt with a tree for first, a large, dangerous-looking rock for second, and a rusted hunk of metal that might have once been a motor for a refrigerator for third base. The newest-looking object in sight was a tall fence that bordered the outfield, with barbed wire running along the top.
Eddie looked at the fence and then at the circle of poor kids standing around them, staring silently. For the first time, he noticed that none of the kids had a ball. Did they use rocks or something?
“Um, you want to choose sides or what?” Eddie said to Guillermo.
Guillermo laughed.
“No,” he said, shoving Eddie hard in the chest. “I want your money. Cough it up, you little bitch.”
CHAPTER 37
“What?” Eddie said in amazement. “Wait, you’re joking, right? C’mon, are we going to play, or what?”
Guillermo shoved him again, harder.
“I’m not kidding. Give me your money.”
“Don’t forget his iPhone, G,” said the kid with no shoes. “You know some do-gooder city kid got an iPhone, dawg.”
Guillermo grabbed Eddie roughly by his shirt and poked him hard in the chin with the tip of the grungy metal bat.
Jane started crying then. This wasn’t happening. How could this be happening?
“Give me everything you have, or I’m going to knock the shit out of you,” Guillermo said.
“I knew it!” Brian yelled as he came running from behind the trees off to the right.
Guillermo froze in place as the six-foot-one former Fordham Prep nose tackle grabbed him by his shirt and shoved him, sprawling, onto the ground.
The trailer-park kids scattered immediately into the woods as the kid and his bat went flying. Jane stood there, wide-eyed. She didn’t know what she wanted to do more: wrap her arms around her big brother’s neck or do a cartwheel.
Brian picked up the bat.
“Hey, it’s OK, man. I was just playing aro
und,” Guillermo said, dusting himself off as he finally stood. “Now give me the bat back, OK? I was only kidding.”
Brian hefted the bat.
“This bat?” Brian said. “You want this bat back?”
Brian turned and hurled it as hard as he could. It made a whistling sound as it spun through the air like a thrown airplane propeller. After a while, it landed out of sight, in the vegetation on the other side of the barbedwire fence.
“There’s your bat back, punk,” Brian said. “Go fetch.”
“Hey, why’d you do that?” Guillermo said in honest shock.
“I wonder,” Brian said, squinting at him. “You think you can mess with my little brother and sister? You’re lucky I didn’t return the bat upside your head.”
The kid looked at Brian, then at the fence, and suddenly started crying.
“I need the bat back. It belongs to my brother, man. Now he’s going to kill me.”
Brian eyed the kid.
“Then go get it, you little baby.”
“I can’t. Look where you threw it, man. Right into the middle of Cristiano’s patch.”
“So what? It’s a fence and some bushes. Start climbing.”
“Just some bushes? You crazy? Open your eyes. That’s weed, yo! That whole thing is a cash crop of premium weed. Cristiano don’t play. He’s got dogs, man. Rotties in there. Booby traps, too, people say. What goes in there, stays in there.”
“Did you say weed?” Jane asked. “As in marijuana? You can’t grow weed. That’s illegal.”
“Hello? Where the hell are you from? That’s all they grow around here,” Guillermo insisted, wiping tears from his eyes.
“And that makes you what? Cool or something?” Brian said, shaking with anger. This place is America? he thought. He really felt like punching the kid right in his face.
“Eddie, Jane, come on. We’re getting the hell out of here now,” Brian said.
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