by M C Rowley
“The mission’s still on,” he said.
Relief spread around my body like I was in a soothing bath. I knew Eleanor felt the same.
“And something came up,” Rose said.
“What is it?” asked Jean.
Rose opened the file to show a nighttime scene of a man lying across a dirty curbside. His face was bloody and his limbs twisted around his back.
Eleanor spoke first. “Who is that?”
“That,” said Rose, “is our Son number three. Juan Jurado, or JJ to his friends.”
Jean peered more closely. “This photo was taken in Mexico. You can tell from the curb painting.”
Rose nodded, then looked at me. “Your son flew back to Mexico City last night and killed him—after a little bit of torture, we presume. JJ was thrown like that from a moving car.”
My head spun. I heard Eleanor gulp.
“Jairo and Mr. Reynolds are moving ahead of us. And they don’t need these guys alive.”
Jean nodded. “They’re extracting information from them.”
Rose nodded. “Exactly. Reynolds didn’t care whether we caught these guys. He wanted Jairo to get something out of them.”
Eleanor closed her eyes. “So what do we do?”
Rose went to the pin board and took down the photo Reynolds had left for us, pinned to the chest of one of the Sons he’d mutilated, and brought it to the table.
“Look at the picture again. Ten men. We have five. Three are dead. The other is Rafa Casas.”
Jean said. “The one in FBI witness protection.”
“Right,” said Rose. “And the last? Isn’t it obvious?”
We looked at each other, and I spoke. “Jairo. The last is Jairo. We know that already.”
“So Reynolds has all the men he needs for whatever it is he’s planning. Except Rafa Casas.”
Eleanor’s voice came from behind me, shaky and broken. “I can’t believe Jairo would…”
I turned and put my arm around her shoulders, but she brushed it away, staring forward into nothingness.
She said, “How did we let him become this? What have they done to him? What has Reynolds got on him?”
I glanced at Rose, then Jean. They hung their heads.
“Eleanor,” said Rose, “I know this must be hard to take. But your son is working with Reynolds. You must accept that.”
“We need to find our granddaughter,” I said.
Rose said, “And the best way to do that is to find Reynolds and your son. And the only way to do that is to find Rafa Casas before they do.”
But Rose didn’t finish his point because his cell phone rang in his pocket. He took it out, looked at the caller ID, and walked out of the room.
We waited in silence, and after five minutes Rose reemerged, a grim look on his face.
“That was one of my bosses at Langley. He promised to nudge the FBI for the location of Casas. Looks like we have a target area.”
Jean stood. “Where?”
“Midwest City, Oklahoma.”
“What are we waiting for?”
Rose said, “There’s more.”
He took his phone out and opened a photo and showed it to us.
“My bosses also sent me this.”
We peered at the tiny screen, but it was clear enough. A CCTV still taken at a bus station. A sign in the background confirmed the location—Midwest City Buses, it read. It was the area where people disembarked the buses, and in the middle of a small rabble of folk stood someone we all recognized immediately.
In a white t-shirt, jeans and a black cap, his beard and arm tattoos visible, was Jairo.
“Damn it,” said Jean. “We need to move now!”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Hacienda Los Venados, El Bajío region, Mexico
X04 passed the rolled-up hundred-dollar bill to X05 and watched him demolish a line of cocaine that looked more like a fluffy white caterpillar. He himself felt buzzed, but the nerves had not subsided. X05 looked at him and snorted hard white residue all over his mustache.
It had been three hours since word of the attack on Metalex had reached them. And they had no clue what to do next, or whom to attack, or whose families to kidnap.
They were stumped.
The company had barely operated a month as their private cash cow, set up by Mr. Reynolds. They had laundered only five million dollars. And now it was burning to the ground.
Cover blown.
Cash cow dead.
As soon as the night watch guy had called the Metalex director, and the director had called X04, his voice full of fear, the leader of Código X had dispatched a crew to sort it out. But it was too late. The place had been doused in gasoline and set alight. The crew had told him that was obvious from the stench. Even from here, on the ranch, X04 thought he could smell it.
Paranoid, and with good reason.
X05 spoke as he racked up another two fat lines. “So?”
X04 sat back. Five million dollars was nothing. And their reserves from Mexican operations—namely, small-time drug selling, extortion, and kidnapping—were dangerously low. Reynolds’ money was the key to launching into the American market, starting in Chicago and spreading out across the land, leaving a trail of cheap but devilishly addictive product in their wake.
Now they had jack-shit.
Mr. Reynolds had betrayed them. He had never intended to deliver more money.
And that made no sense at all.
“We find Reynolds. We get our money. We kill him.”
X05 smiled, the coke kicking in at just the right time. “Hell yeah.”
“I will go,” said X04. “I trust no one. You can handle this end?”
X05 nodded.
Just then X04’s cell phone started ringing. He answered.
“What?”
“Boss,” said X11, the guy he’d put in charge of the clean-up crew. “This is fucked-up.”
“Tell me something new, brother.”
The line went quiet. Then X04 heard gunshots down the line.
He said, “What is that?”
More gunshots; then X11 spoke. “We got ambushed. They shot us up.”
X04 put his hand to his temple and rubbed. “How many?”
X11 said, “There’s just me and X15 left.”
X04 said, “Who attacked you?”
“Locals,” said X11. “Fucking loc—”
Rapid gunfire cut him off.
X04 hung up. “This is worse than I thought.”
X05 said, “Get going. Go find that hijo de puta, and bring our money back.”
X04 got up and puffed his chest out. “I’ll bring back more than our money, brother. You can count on that.”
“But we don’t know where Reynolds is, or who he is for that matter.”
“No,” said X04. “But we know where one of his investors is.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Within three hours, Rose, Jean, Eleanor, and I were sitting on a private jet headed to Oklahoma City. It was 2:15 in the afternoon. The flight lasted three hours, and we took a taxi to the Sheraton of Midwest City—an upscale joint for the place, which seemed to be a hundred square miles of two-story buildings. When we got to our suite it was 6:30 p.m.
Rose had had to bring me and Eleanor along. The mission to catch Reynolds, and now Jairo, too, remained a black op. That meant Jean was needed on this, and there was no one else to look after us. So we came.
I was relieved.
“We find Jairo or Casas,” said Rose. “We need to decide whether to focus on Jairo or on Casas, or divide our attention between both.”
He was addressing Jean, but Eleanor and I nodded.
I said, “We can help find Jairo. Maybe draw him out. Then you two can concentrate on Casas.”
Rose considered my idea for a second. “You could. But you two aren’t leaving this room without us. You’re right, though—we have to concentrate on Casas. We have the area. He’s somewhere here, re-housed, new ID, new name.”
<
br /> Jean said, “The FBI, experts in making ex-cons comfortable.”
Rose gave a snarky chuckle. “And this”—he drew out from his jacket a copy of the photo Reynolds had left us depicting the Sons of No One—“is the only photo we have of Casas. It’s years old.”
I stared at it, the group of men Reynolds was hunting, one of them our son. The only one unaccounted was Rafael Casas. He was older than the rest, around fifty in the photo. He was tall, and his gray hair contrasted with his thick black eyebrows.
“We could start by asking in stores and gas stations if they recognize the guy,” said Jean.
Rose nodded. “That’s all we got. My contact is doing me a favor here.”
A little over twenty-three kilometers to the east, the man who used to be known as Rafael Casas was washing his truck. He loved to wash his truck on Saturdays. It relaxed him and gave him time to think. He was also bored out of his mind, and scheduled tasks had become the highlight of his existence. That and fishing. At least he was a stone’s throw from Wes Watkins Lake. That was fortunate, he supposed. He’d even made friends here. His English had been good enough to pass off as just another illegal alien who’d lasted it out to get papers. His cover was ex-military, and he received a modest pension from it, too. But aside from his buddies on the lake, he was alone.
And then today came. He had something to think about. He felt scared by what he’d seen over in Midwest City, but he would have been lying if he’d denied there was a little excitement mixed in with it. And he was sure about what he’d seen, too.
He’d been driving back from the Walmart there—he preferred their wine selection to what Newalla had to offer—and he’d passed a person he had known from his old life.
The life the FBI had promised was dead forever.
He had seen the younger capo of his old gang, Jairo Morales, across the street, walking across a car park. Morales had aged of course since Rafa had last seen him, but it was unmistakably him.
Rafa’s holding agent, Rivers, had told him to report any sort of strange happenings, and had forbidden Rafa to use the internet except for contacting him. But Rafa had held off telling Rivers that one of the Sons of No One was here, in Oklahoma.
Now, that didn’t make sense. Jairo would not be here to say hello or get a tour of the lake. Rafa had screwed the Sons big time. So it was reasonable to presume Jairo was here for revenge. Avenging their old brothers, the Sons.
Rafa should have been terrified. And part of him was. But a bigger part, a more robust part deep inside him, felt excited.
He missed the game. And he wanted to find out why young Morales was here.
Back in Midwest City, Jairo Morales sat in his motel room. He had been in the city for a whole day and found nothing on Casas. And it was time to report to Reynolds and make sure he’d held up his part of the deal.
He took out the cell phone they used to communicate and dialed the only number he needed, which he had memorized.
Two rings and then a crackle and the voice distorter. “Yes,” said Reynolds.
“Did you get her there?”
Jairo listened to Reynolds’ breathing before the silence was broken. “She is safe. She arrived there this morning. As per your request.”
Jairo dropped his head.
“Now,” said Reynolds. “Did you find Casas yet?”
“No,” said Jairo. “But I will.” And he hung up.
He lay back on the hard mattress and stared at the ceiling.
If Reynolds was telling the truth, he had managed to get Jairo’s daughter to the only safe place he knew. Jairo would never be a father. He wasn’t built for it. But he knew she would be safe for now.
Provided Reynolds was telling the truth.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
After a fruitless search the night before, Rose had told us to get some sleep, which we duly did, me and Eleanor in a double bed, and Jean and Rose in singles. Now it was morning and the sun was shining outside. Rose told Jean to go this time and show the photo of Casas in local shops. They had cut the other Sons out of the shot so people wouldn’t get confused by the context. They gathered the photo was around six years old, so Rafa Casas might have changed a bit. Maybe his eyebrows had turned gray by now. But not too much.
Rose sat at his laptop and Eleanor and I sat on the small sofa in the main room of the suite. We were going out of our minds with helplessness. All I could think about was little Estrella. It was driving me insane. The familiar feeling of having lost a child came back to me, smashing my nervous system in waves. So I turned my attention to Jairo and Casas and the old cartel.
What would a guy in witness protection be like? Scared? Edgy? Or bored?
And then it hit me. I stood up.
“Rose.”
He stopped typing but kept reading his screen. “What?”
I said, “I have an idea.”
He turned to me. “Go on.”
“Casas is ex-gangster, right?”
Rose breathed in deeply like a parent about to be told a long story by a five year old.
“We can grab his attention. Make him move.”
Rose leaned forward, a little interested. “Go on,” he said.
Eleanor was staring at me, too.
“Well,” I said, “why don’t you put something in the local paper, or on the local news, about there being a sighting of Jairo Morales right here in Midwest City? It might shake Casas up a bit. It might make him run. Or even make him look for Jairo.”
Rose didn’t move, but his mind was working over my idea; I could practically see the gears grinding.
“You know what? You might have something there.” Rose pulled his phone out and put it to his ear. “Santos? Get back here. We may have a plan.”
Then Rose got up, the phone still glued to his ear. “What?” He listened and a smile spread across his face. “Perfect,” he said and hung up.
I asked, “What happened?”
Rose’s smile stayed put. “Agent Santos has found out where Jairo is staying. She went door to door and hit the jackpot.”
Fifteen minutes later, Jean Santos was back in the room, pumped and shifting from heel to heel.
Rose had decided that my idea was a goer. But he wouldn’t do it through newspapers or TV. He would use the local radio stations. Now he was calling the necessary departments of the necessary broadcasters to authorize a special public warning to all residents in and around the Midwest City area, including Oklahoma City itself.
Within an hour, Rose had secured three major local radio stations’ agreement to play a short news message announcing the presence in the area of the highly dangerous Jairo Morales with a detailed physical description. It advised the public not to approach him but to call a special number to report any sightings. The number was Rose’s cell phone.
Once it was done, we sat back and waited for the announcement to go out, and crossed our fingers it would draw out one or both of the two men we sought.
The man formerly known as Rafael Casas was on his boat, fishing. The lake waters were a hazy green-brown and the air above was as still as it would be in a greenhouse. The lake was narrow and long, about five kilometers in length and about one across in places, although it was a strange shape, with six or seven small estuary inlets that spread out from the main body of water like fingers. Rafa liked to explore those little inlets and fish in peace. Which was exactly what he was doing now, relaxing with rod in hand, sipping a thermos of iced tea, watching the float. And listening to the small wireless radio turned down pretty low.
And then he heard it.
‘This is a special broadcast announcement from the authorities.’
Rafa, or José (he still felt more like Rafa), sat up and threw his thermos down.
‘The public are warned that a fugitive from the Federal Government of the United States of America is believed to be active in the Midwest City area. Under no circumstances should anyone approach the man, as he is highly dangerous and likely armed. Inst
ead, any sightings should be reported to 202-1437-401.
‘The man is Jairo Morales. He is in his early twenties and Caucasian, with a thin, athletic build. He has short cropped hair and wears a beard. He is believed to have been staying at the Super 8 Motel in the downtown area.
‘That number again: 202-1437-401.’
Rafa sat back in his small wooden boat and felt it rock. He smiled. So it had been Jairo he had seen outside Walmart.
At first he didn’t know what to do. But he knew what he wanted. He wanted…no, he needed to see Jairo again.
And he felt, for the first time in a long while, that fire come back into his belly. He reeled in the float, pulled the motor starter cable hard, and began trundling across the dirty green water to the jetty and his truck.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
New York City
The Founders, as Reynolds called them, stared at the balance sheet over and over again. They were in the oldest Founder’s private office in downtown Manhattan. They never used names in case they were being recorded. But they knew each other well enough. They even got on. But they were not getting on in this moment.
Because of this damn balance sheet.
Mr. Reynolds had brought them together a couple of years back, and they had trusted him—after he had proven himself by producing a decent ROI for six months, of course. They knew about the investment going to a new cartel in Mexico. They knew the money was being returned from illegal sources. They knew all that. Because this was the only way they could trade.
And the return had started out enormous, putting anything you could make on the stock market into cold shadows. So they had started to increase their investment, almost ten billion dollars between them all.
But then two things had occurred to send their situation into a death spiral. First, one of them went missing—a man by the name of Cassidy who had put in a considerable percentage of the total amount. Second, the fund manager, Mr. Reynolds—the man they had never seen—had gone AWOL. And their money along with him.
