by David Nees
He rubbed scuff marks out of the pavement as best he could and got back into the pickup. He had been fortunate that no other vehicles had come past while the encounter was being played out. Now it was time to go. He drove off. His leg was throbbing and had started to bleed again. He would need to attend to it soon.
Jane sat in her office staring at the phone for a full five minutes. A leak. Where? Finally she got up and started pulling the drawers out of her desk. She examined the tops of the drawer cavities and the underside of the frame. Next she grabbed a chair and placed it under the smoke detector. With a letter opener, she pried the cover off and checked the insides; no bugs. She looked around. There were so many places; it would take an expert a full day to scour the room. It could really only be done properly with electronic gear.
She sat back down. After a few minutes she got up and left her office for Henry’s down the hall. She knocked on the door and received an invitation to enter.
“Henry, let’s have a drink after work. I’m a bit fried and need someone to lean on while I decompress.”
Henry gave her an odd look. Jane put a finger to her lips and picked up a sheet of paper from Henry’s desk. She quickly wrote on it: My office may be bugged, yours also. We need to talk off site. Jane crumpled the note and put it in her pocket after Henry read it. He nodded.
“I’m free at 3 pm. Want to leave early?”
“That works,” Jane replied. “See you in a couple of hours.”
She turned and left the room.
Three hours later Jane and Henry were sitting in the Bethesda diner where they’d had coffee with Dan months ago.
“Why do you think our offices are bugged?” Henry asked after they had sat down.
“They’re either bugged or one of my people is leaking information.” Henry just looked at her quizzically. “Think about it. Someone had to give the cartel the exfiltration contact info. They most likely killed the men the embassy sent. They had the sat phone and they knew what the routine was going to be. Who knew that outside of you, my staff and whoever you told at the embassy?”
“The embassy is probably where the leak is,” Henry replied.
“But who would have told them that this request was something important enough to kill for? The plan had to be divulged and the embassy didn’t know what the plan was. They had no idea what was going on.”
“What about your staff?”
“Fred and Warren. I picked them because they were outsiders here, misfits. This assignment let them join a small team and be a part of something where they could be comfortable. We’re the outsiders, let’s face it. They sensed that from the start and knew this assignment would be where they’d fit in. I can’t imagine them being moles.”
“Still, we should check them out.”
“And if they clear, Warren can help us sweep the offices.”
“I’ll arrange a lie detector session as quietly as I can for each of them,” Henry said.
“I’ll work on the questions,” Jane replied.
Chapter 39
___________________________________
R odrigo looked at the burned out wreckage of the five trucks. The fire department had gone and the police were just finishing up. Rodrigo let them know clearly that he and his boss, Hector Ortega, now the head of the Sinaloa cartel, would take care of the incident. He had nothing to say to the police except they were to leave this to Don Hector.
When they were gone, Rodrigo put in a call to Hector.
“Don Hector, it’s me, Rodrigo. I made it out of the desert. I’m the only one who did.” He went on to explain to Hector how some of the men rebelled and walked off leaving him and Ramón alone with two other men and how the truck rolled down a hill and caught fire, killing everyone else. He explained that he walked back to the pickup the gringo had abandoned and managed to get the flat tire changed and drove out of the desert.
“Where is the pickup now?”
Rodrigo didn’t answer. A panic began to rise in him.
“So where is the pickup? Does it have any weapons? Any evidence of who this gringo is?”
Hector was too interested in the truck which was on its way to Mexico City.
“It finally broke down, another flat tire. But I was close to the road by then and could walk until I got a ride.”
He knew that if Hector went looking for the truck or the cop who stopped them was ever heard from, his story wouldn’t hold up, but it would keep Don Hector satisfied for now.
“I found nothing in the truck to tell me who this man was. And he took his weapons with him. There was nothing left but gas cans and some rope.” Rodrigo paused and then went on. “I called you to tell you that someone blew up the five trucks that were to take the terrorists to the border. The terrorists were in the trucks. They are all dead.”
There was silence on the line, then an explosion of swearing and cursing.
“Hijo de puta!” Son of a bitch! Is it the gringo?”
“I don’t think so. He couldn’t have gotten out of the desert. I had a truck to drive. He would have had to walk all the way and there was no water.”
“Maybe he had more water than you knew of.”
“Maybe it was one of the other cartels.” Rodrigo kept the suggestion vague as he didn’t know how much progress Don Hector had made.
Ortega kept swearing but didn’t directly answer. “What about Tariq?”
“He’s here. He insists on meeting with you. He holds you responsible.”
“What about Carlos?”
Rodrigo thought for a moment. Should he tell Don Hector or just let Carlos be missing for a while? The body would be found eventually and it would look bad for him then to not have told. But would he be here when that happened?
“Carlos is dead.”
“What? How?”
“I caught him molesting my sister Miranda. He thought I was lost in the desert and decided to take her against her will. I caught him and killed him. I hope you understand, but I can’t let him kidnap and rape my sister.”
Hector didn’t answer the implied question of honor but only said, “I’ll be there later today. I want to see you at the warehouse.”
He hung up the phone.
Rodrigo pondered his next move. Was it time to run and hide or should he play things out for a few days more? What advantage would it give him to wait any longer? Just then Tariq approached.
“Where is Hector? I want to talk to someone about this outrage.” He pressed up close to Rodrigo. “My finest sixty men are dead. We stayed in this compound for weeks and what did it get us? All killed.” His face was a mask of rage and hate. “You are valueless dogs. The next men I send here will be to kill you.”
“Maybe I should kill you now. Then I won’t have to worry about you.”
“You kill me and you will have the vengeance of al Qaida on you, dog. But I don’t want to talk to you. Where is Hector or Jorge? They are the ones how need to explain what happened.”
“Jorge is dead, killed by a sniper. Don Hector is now in charge of the cartel.”
Tariq stepped back. “Dead? That explains much.”
“Don Hector had to get matters under control so civil war didn’t break out among the cartels.”
“He should have moved my men to the border right away. He wasn’t able to protect them.” Tariq turned away declaring, “He will have to pay for this.”
Rodrigo didn’t respond. He’d let Hector deal with the man. His phone rang.
“Hola,” Rodrigo said.
“I’ll be arriving at the airport by helicopter this afternoon at 2 pm. Meet me there with an armored car. Bring two.” It was Hector. The phone went dead before Rodrigo could answer.
There were three armored SUVs in the warehouse compound. Rodrigo grabbed four guards and told them to be ready at 1 pm to drive to the airport.
“Take AKs and handguns. Bring extra magazines. We don’t know how dangerous it is for Don Hector right now and nothing else bad can happen.”
Warren had a sour expression on his face. “I don’t appreciate the fact that you didn’t trust me. I could have faked out the machine for all you know, it can be done and I can do it, but I played it straight because I don’t have anything to hide.”
“Don’t be offended,” Henry said. “Everyone has to go through the test, you know that. And we seem to have a breach in confidentiality within our ranks.”
“Now that we know you two aren’t involved, I want you to sweep our offices for bugs,” Jane said.
“Yours and mine and Fred’s?” Warren asked.
“And Henry’s,” she said.
“If you find anything, identify it but don’t disturb it. We don’t want whoever is doing this to know we’re on to them,” Henry said. “If we remove the bugs, they’ll just come back at us another way. Better to leave them in place and work around them.”
“They get scraps for intel and we keep our dark secrets to ourselves,” Fred said.
“You got it,” Henry replied. “Whoever it is will catch on eventually, but we’ll have time to try to identify them.”
“What will you do when you find out?” Warren asked.
“That depends on who it is,” Henry said. “Can you get some sweeping equipment without attracting too much attention?”
“I can purchase some good equipment on the market and won’t have to go through office requisition. I do have some favors to call in over at tech, but you may not want me to use that route.”
“You’re right,” Jane said. “Let’s keep this as quiet as possible.”
That afternoon Warren went into Arlington to an electronics store, essentially a covert device shop. He purchased a wide range radio frequency, or rf, scanner. He brought it with him to work the next day. Being a tech guy and a known geek, no one was surprised at any electronic equipment in his backpack.
“This will find most anything after you turn off all electronics in the room,” he told Jane. “If we need more, we have to spend big bucks for a nonlinear junction detector.”
“How much is big bucks?” Jane asked.
“Ten to twenty thousand,” Warren replied.
“Let’s see what we find with this,” Jane said. “If we have to take the next step, we may have to take a chance and use the tech department here.”
The sweeps took only a couple of hours. Warren found a bug in Jane’s office and one in Henry’s. The room where he and Fred worked was clean.
“I guess they don’t think we’re worth bugging,” Fred said. “We don’t rate.”
“That’s a good thing,” Jane replied. “We can use your space to discuss critical issues.
Later Jane and Henry sat in Fred and Warren’s office while the two men were at lunch.
“So who do you think it might be?” she asked.
“Don’t know. I have a good sense of who it isn’t. I don’t think it’s my boss Roger. He’s on board with the program. Was so from the beginning and is now supportive, even with the blowup in Mexico.”
“The DDO?”
“No. If Garrett wanted to shut us down, he’d just do it. No, it’s someone who doesn’t have enough rank, but doesn’t like these black ops, especially the ones that go out and eliminate the bad guys. Someone who wants the CIA to be a tame organization, more politically correct and not in danger of having some congressional investigation uncover anything uncomfortable.”
“That doesn’t rule out a lot of people, unfortunately,” Jane said.
“I’ll talk to Roger. I don’t think he’ll like the fact that someone is intruding on his turf. He’ll want to handle it quietly, but maybe the two of us can go through some possibilities.”
“So how do we shut it down?”
“Depends on how much horsepower the person involved has. We don’t want things to blow up in our face and we get ‘outted’. That’s as good as killing the program. It has to be clandestine.”
Chapter 40
___________________________________
R odrigo was nervous. He rode in the lead SUV. They drove out onto the airfield and up to the helicopter landing area. The two armored vehicles were there when Hector’s chopper arrived. It was the same one Jorge and María had used, the Airbus H155. Rodrigo got out and held the rear door open for Don Hector as he emerged from the helicopter. Four other men got out. Rodrigo recognized only two of them. They were aides and bodyguards. They had worked for Jorge and now took orders from Hector. They were high up on the pecking order and one had to be careful not to mess with them or get on their bad side. Rodrigo’s worry increased. Three of them got in the trailing SUV and one got in the front of the lead vehicle. Hector and Rodrigo sat in the back.
“You have let things go very wrong here,” Hector said.
“Don Hector, por favor. I just got back from almost dying in the desert. Then I find Carlos is attacking my sister. I couldn’t let that stand. She’s my family. I had to protect her. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be a man and no one would respect me.”
Hector ignored his remark. They drove through the town and pulled into the warehouse compound. “When shit happens, you have to move quickly to stay ahead of it. It is how you survive. You let the guards get lazy, since no one was in charge. You kill Carlos who had been filling in for you and then you don’t immediately take over. Someone then gets into the warehouse compound and does this.” Hector pointed to the burned wreckage of the trucks.
“I am sorry, Don Hector. I am now focused and will make sure nothing else goes wrong.”
Hector looked over at Rodrigo with cold eyes. Rodrigo could sense Hector felt challenged on all fronts and he knew that Hector would be ruthless in making sure he eliminated any weaknesses.
“I know you will,” Hector replied in a hard, cold voice. “I’m leaving Raúl here to help you. If I don’t think you are up to the job, he will replace you.”
Hector got out and the men followed him into the warehouse. Tariq tried to approach, but was shoved away.
“Hector Ortega, you have to talk to me. You are responsible for this,” Tariq shouted as the men went into an inner room in the warehouse.
The door closed and Rodrigo spoke. “Don Hector, you don’t have to do that. I will make things go smoothly. I did so in the past.”
“You had me helping in the past. Now I have to work on bigger things and can’t cover for any of your mistakes. You will do things right or Raúl will take over. You see what I have to deal with now? That is my final word on this.”
“Sí, Don Hector.”
“Now, who did this?”
Rodrigo didn’t speak. He knew, but it wouldn’t make sense to Hector and would only increase his suspicions of him. But what cartel could it be and how could they know about the terrorists?
“Can you speak?”
“I, I don’t know. I guess it’s a rival gang.”
“But how would they know about the men at the warehouse?” Hector looked at Rodrigo. “We have a mystery here.”
“But I know nothing of it since I just got back, almost from the dead.”
“Yes, we will have to talk more about that. But for now we have to find out who did this? Who knew about the men waiting to go to the U.S.?” Hector got up. “I have to take care of this man, Tariq. I’ll be back.” He turned to leave the room.
Rodrigo was left with a sinking feeling in his gut and the unsympathetic stares from the four men who came with Don Hector.
Hector came out of the room and Tariq was on him immediately.
“You have ruined my plans. You will pay for this.”
Hector looked at him. He wished he could have his men kill him right now, but that would end the drug connection.
“I am not at fault. Don Jorge was assassinated and I had to find out who did it to save us from a gang war.”<
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“And someone got into your warehouse and blew up the trucks with my men in them. You had incompetent men protecting us. It is very much your fault.”
“I am trying to find out who did this. Believe me, when I do, they will pay.”
Tariq shook his head in disgust. “And will that bring my men back? Men I trained for months to do this job? You have set us back a year with your carelessness. I’m not sure we can do business with you again.” He looked at Hector with his dark eyes filled with anger and hate.
“So you will go somewhere else with your plans?”
Tariq felt a stab of caution. He felt a trap. “No. We may have to do something completely different.”
“I am the best one to receive your drugs. And you have been well paid for this first shipment.”
“But you can’t protect my men and get them smuggled into the U.S. That is something I want to accomplish as well. How can I trust you with more of my men when you have failed me now?”
Hector paused. Tariq could see he was holding back from what he wanted to say. Tariq had said the right thing and not provoked him. Hector’s response was diplomatic.
“I can’t do anything to replace these men, but I can make it up to you. I will pay you for your loss with the next drug shipment and I will make the changes to see to it that your men are moved quickly to the border after they arrive.”
Tariq chose to not argue any more. He would decide later.
“I need to gather up the remains and give them a proper Islamic burial.”
“If my men can help, let me know.” Hector turned to go back inside.
“You will help me take them out into the desert to bury them properly, then take me back to Veracruz. I will fly home from there.”
Hector waved his hand but didn’t turn around. Inside the warehouse, he directed a man to help Tariq gather the remains.
“Rodrigo, you will dine with me tonight at Café Montenegro, downtown. We will talk in detail about your adventures in the desert and what you did to Carlos. I’m anxious to hear all about these things. Then we’ll go and find the pickup. I want to see it for myself, the truck the gringo used to outsmart us and get away from us.”
