by Don Mann
Crocker slapped the side of the sofa where Mancini, Akil, and Suárez were sitting and said, “Good. Let’s go.”
David Lane was younger than Crocker expected—mid-to-late thirties, medium height, short dark thinning hair, a long face. He wasn’t anyone who would stand out in a crowd, but projected commitment and intelligence. He also looked harried and tired.
The FBI agent in charge sat at a dining room table covered with papers, the sleeves of his blue-check oxford shirt rolled up to his elbows. He was typing furiously on a laptop and sipping a Diet Coke when Crocker approached.
“Welcome,” Lane said. “I’m finishing a report on the violence today.”
“I hear you have a plan.”
Lane finished typing, leaned forward and reread what he had just written, and pressed Send. Turning to Crocker, he said, “The violence here is shocking to our sensibilities but not unusual for them.”
“I just read a bunch of news reports Nieves gave me. Gruesome stuff.”
“A Mexican academic I know explained that it goes back to the Aztec view of the world, which was frightening, and ruled by gods who were dangerous and demanding. Our God isn’t so demanding, is he, Crocker?”
“I don’t know.”
“Our God wants us to be fair and considerate, but he doesn’t demand our blood in return for simple things like the sun rising in the morning or rainfall,” Lane said, nodding toward a redheaded woman who entered in tight blue pants with a pistol in a holster on her hip.
She smiled back at Lane as if they had made some secret communication.
“No, he doesn’t,” Crocker remarked.
“The Aztecs believed that the gods gave nothing without demanding something in return,” Lane continued. “In the case of the Aztec god of rain, Tlaloc, he required the blood of children ages six and seven to ensure the end of the dry season and a sufficient period of rain. Boys and girls were chosen who had double cowlicks in their hair, which was considered an auspicious sign. He preferred the children of nobles. After they were selected, they were dressed in colorful paper costumes and carried from the city to seven ceremonial sites. Their mothers followed them. If they cried a lot, that was considered a good omen. The quantity of tears the children shed before they were sacrificed was considered a direct correlation to the rain that could be expected in the coming year.”
Lane was obviously thoughtful and well read. But Crocker hadn’t come to hear a lecture on comparative religions, or on the cultural connection between the Aztecs and the modern cartels. “Interesting,” he said. “Now let’s talk about the mission.”
“The more time I spend in this country, the more I appreciate the difference in cultures,” Lane continued, maintaining a composed demeanor. “I don’t think we fully understand the cultural and historical context we’re dealing with here.”
“I’m sure you’re right.”
“You’re nodding your head like you agree,” Lane said, “but you’re looking at me like I’m full of shit.”
“I was told that a senator’s wife and daughter are scheduled to be executed less than thirty-six hours from now.”
“We’re well aware of that, Crocker,” Lane replied.
“For your information, we’ve been operating without sleep for more than two days, with little in the way of resources,” the redhead announced as she pulled a document out of a printer.
“You’ll be moving soon enough,” said Lane. “We’re planning a raid for early tomorrow morning. Isn’t that correct, Karen?”
“Right.”
Crocker quickly glanced at his watch. “You’re talking six to eight hours from now?”
“Yes, Crocker. Is that soon enough for you?”
He didn’t care about their attitude, or whether or not they’d slept. He wanted to make sure that what he had just heard was right. “So you’ve established where Lisa Clark and her daughter are being held?” he asked.
Both Lane and Karen nodded. “That’s correct.”
Crocker’s sense of urgency shot up. “Where are they?”
“Nearby.”
“How’d you find them?”
Lane stood and indicated to Crocker to follow him outside through the double glass doors. Karen grimaced and shot him the middle finger.
Crocker didn’t waste a second worrying about the impression he had made on her, or on Lane, for that matter. He stood facing Lane as a warm breeze blew through the compound, stirring the full trees, and Lane lit a Marlboro. From a distance the lights of the city conveyed only promise and beauty.
Lane’s eyes narrowed as he exhaled a long stream of white smoke through the amber porch light.
“I understand that you and your men are the best at what you do, which is why you’re here. And I totally respect that,” he said in a measured tone of voice. “But I want you to know that my people are incredibly capable and dedicated, too. Karen, Nieves, Marion, Higgins, the others. They’ve worked their butts off and risked their lives to bring us to this point.”
Crocker said, “I don’t mean any disrespect.”
Lane exhaled again. “Not a problem.” He tossed the partially smoked cigarette and crushed it with the heel of his shoe. “This is my operation. My team has spent many hours piecing together shards of information from a myriad of human and electronic sources, analyzing them, and drawing up a plan. In a little while, some people are going to arrive, and we’re going to brief you on everything A to Z.”
“That’s not necessary,” Crocker said. “We trust you.”
“No. You and your men are about to undertake a very dangerous operation and I think we owe you that.”
“All we need to know are the logistics of the operation. How many people we’re going up against, how they’re armed, where the hostages are being held; details like that. How good is your intel?”
Lane pulled an NEC Terrain out of his back pocket and scrolled through his messages. “I’ve been working the border area for years, assisting local police departments, ICE, border patrol, and the DEA. It’s a losing battle. The only way we can be effective is to get inside the cartels and close to the guys calling the shots. And that involves enormous risks.”
“You know someone close to the people who executed the kidnapping?” Crocker asked, stretching the muscles in his lower back.
“Yes, we have a source,” Lane whispered back.
Crocker got excited. This was what he wanted to hear. “Who are they, the kidnappers?”
“Members of a very dangerous narcoterrorist group called Los Zetas.”
“Nieves told me about them. But…why?”
“Why did they kidnap Lisa and Olivia Clark?” Lane asked back.
Crocker nodded. “Yeah.”
“It has to do with a power struggle they’re involved in with the Sinaloa cartel,” Lane answered. “We don’t know if all the Zetas are behind it. But according to our source, this particular leader, the guy who executed this, is trying to show the power and range of his particular cell, while also earning brownie points with the Mexican people by giving the United States a black eye. Senator Clark isn’t a very popular figure here, because of his pronouncements on drug trafficking and immigration.”
“I get that. Where specifically are they being held?”
“Specifically, a house, or estate, two miles northeast.”
Someone was tapping on the glass door behind them. They turned in unison and saw Nieves pointing at his open mouth and waving them inside.
“I think he’s trying to tell us that dinner has arrived,” Lane said.
“Then what?” Crocker asked.
“Then we wait for our asset. She’s scheduled to arrive soon,” Lane said, sliding open the door and waiting for Crocker to enter first. “She knows the entire layout of the estate, numbers of guards, the location of the rooms where are women are being held, everything.”
Crocker stopped halfway. “She?” he asked. “Your source is a woman?”
“That’s correct,” Lane answer
ed. “You have a problem with that?”
Crocker shook his head. “Not at all.”
The truth was that he worried throughout dinner. He’d been burned by a female source several years ago in Algeria, when he was sent to intercept a shipment of weapons to a group of Islamic terrorists. Instead of expressing his concerns, he decided to wait until he could pull Lane aside and ask him if he had other information—like electronic intercepts—that could back up what his source was telling him.
Five minutes into the chicken mole, black beans, and rice, Lane was summoned upstairs by Karen.
Crocker watched Akil admire her as she climbed the stairs.
“I like the way she wears that pistol,” cracked Akil.
“She can probably kick your ass,” Davis responded.
“She will, too, if you piss her off,” said Nieves as he licked spicy chocolate sauce from the side of his mouth. “Karen’s a black belt in karate and a former female motocross champ.”
Crocker had raced motorcycles as a teenager and had thought about turning pro before he joined the navy.
“Bring it on,” Akil said, washing down the beef tacos he had ordered with bottled water.
Nieves: “She’s not into guys.”
Akil: “She will be when she meets me.”
Nieves laughed loudly.
The flat-screen TV on the wall to the left of where they were seated was tuned to CNN International. When a picture of Lisa Clark appeared on the screen, Mancini grabbed the remote and turned up the sound.
The men grew quiet. A Mexican female correspondent named Carmen Aristegui was being interviewed by Christiane Amanpour. She said the kidnapping was a huge embarrassment to newly elected president Enrique Peña Nieto. One of the Mexican president’s campaign promises had been to prioritize the reduction of violence. He also pledged that he did not support the involvement of armed U.S. agents in Mexico—a practiced encouraged by the previous Felipe Calderón administration, which had waged a much-publicized and maligned war on drug traffickers.
“Dumb,” Akil groaned.
Artistegui, who spoke as though she was an expert on Mexico, said that many Mexican political watchers theorized that the kidnapping was the work of President Peña Nieto’s political rivals. She reported that the president was personally heading an all-out effort to locate the kidnappers and their victims. According to an unnamed source close to the president, his security advisors believed that Lisa and Olivia Clark were being held somewhere in the state of Chihuahua, which bordered the United States.
The city of Chihuahua was something like six hundred miles northeast of where they were now.
“Is that correct? Mancini asked.
Crocker: “No. Her information is wrong.”
“How come journalists never get it right?” Davis asked, lifting a bottle of Dos Equis.
“Because they listen to the experts, and the experts never know what the fuck they’re talking about,” Akil answered.
“And the people who do know generally keep their mouths shut,” Nieves added.
A harried Senator Clark appeared on the screen. He was being interviewed in a Capitol Hill corridor and looked like he hadn’t slept soundly in days. When he was asked about the kidnapper’s demands to release the forty drug cartel associates from U.S. jails, Clark said, “I love my wife and daughter immensely and ask the people holding them to please let them go. They are good, loving people. As far as the kidnapper’s demands, I support our government’s policy.”
It was U.S. policy never to negotiate with or give in to the demands of criminals or terrorists.
Crocker put his plate down on the glass coffee table and pulled Nieves into the kitchen.
“We need to get moving,” he said, looking at his watch, which showed that it was 2100 hours and approximately twenty-seven hours from the kidnappers’ deadline.
Nieves finished chewing and swallowed. “What did Lane tell you?”
“He said we’re going to launch before dawn, and we’re waiting for this Mexican woman who knows where the Clarks are being held. She’s their source, which is fine, but in the meantime, we have some things to take care of, like getting armed.”
Nieves knitted his thick black eyebrows together and said, “I don’t know anything about her. I believe she’s being run by that redhead you met, Karen Steele, and this other guy named Bob Marion. You’ll have to ask Lane about that.”
“You’ve never met her?” Crocker asked.
“The asset? No. It’s not that they don’t trust me. But it’s FBI SOP in a situation like this to keep the circle small.”
“What about gear and weapons?” Crocker continued. “Lane said we’re supposed to move later tonight.”
“I’ve got a shitload of stuff stored in the garage,” Nieves answered. “SIG Sauers, HK45CTs, MP7s, HK416s, M79s, Teflon vests, explosives.”
“All right, listen,” Crocker said, thinking ahead. “I want you to show what you’ve got to my ordnance guy, Mancini. So he can get a sense of what’s available. While you’re doing that, I’ll go upstairs to find out what’s going on.”
Nieves, who was so big and wide he filled a third of the narrow galley kitchen, warned, “No one except for us agents is allowed up there.”
“I have a Level-Seven security clearance,” Crocker said.
“I’ve got to check with Lane first.”
“Screw that.”
Chapter Nine
If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.
—Mario Andretti
Crocker climbed the wooden steps two at a time up to the second floor, entered the open door to his right, and saw Lane standing with his back to him speaking on an encrypted phone—which he indentified immediately from the configuration of the instrument and the key on top.
Lane, seeing Crocker, waved him away and snapped his fingers at Karen Steele, who was leaning on the edge of a metal desk talking to a guy with buzz-cut dark hair, who Crocker assumed was Bob Marion.
“Sorry, guy,” she said, hurrying over to Crocker and holding up a hand to push him back, “you’re not allowed in here.”
“The hell I’m not. I need to talk to Lane,” Crocker answered, shoving her hand off his chest.
“You can’t!”
Crocker quickly glanced at the clock on the wall. Another fifteen minutes had passed. He said, “Lane, if we’re going to launch this mission tonight, we need to start making plans.”
Lane covered the receiver and shouted, “I know that. Don’t you think I fucking know that?”
“Then hurry up. I want to rescue these women while they’re still alive.”
He knew enough not to take it personally. Tempers frayed sometimes when type A personalities were keyed up and on edge. The important thing was that they were all fighting for the same cause and had a lot at stake.
Fight in people was a positive, not a negative, Crocker reminded himself. It produced good results when directed intelligently, which was what he hoped was going to happen now, as they all sat in the living room—he, Davis, Mancini, Akil, Suárez, Lane, Carlos, Karen Steele, and the wiry guy with the smirk on his face and buzz cut whom he still hadn’t been introduced to but assumed was Bob Marion—listening to the sheriff of Yavapai County, Arizona, describe how a tip phoned into Crime Stoppers led them to an airstrip outside Flagstaff and a flight piloted by a man named Joss Clemson that terminated in Guadalajara.
Karen Steele explained that from the beginning she and other cartel specialists had suspected Los Zetas, in part because of the group’s global ambitions and diversity. Los Zetas, unlike the other leading cartels, were involved in satellite businesses, including the theft of petroleum from the state-owned oil company, PEMEX, software and product piracy, prostitution, human smuggling, extortion, money laundering, assassination for hire, auto theft, and robbery. A July 25, 2011, White House executive order named them a transnational crime threat to U.S. national security.
Sheriff Higgins cut in to
add that the cartel had become a major crime threat in over a thousand cities and towns in the United States. He related how a colleague of his, who was the police chief of Champaign, Illinois, had recently arrested three Zetas members in connection with a murder in a downtown garage. Subsequent to that, the chief started receiving calls on his cell and home phones warning him to release the men and threatening his wife and children.
“They knew the address of his wife’s place of work and where his boys went to school,” said Sheriff Higgins. “They’re scared of no one.”
Next, Steele explained that Los Zetas had evolved from a local Mafia to a quasipolitical organization with international ambitions. They had created alliances with other national criminal groups like Los Kaibiles in Guatemala, as well as the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba, and were known to cooperate with terrorists like Hezbollah.
“If they’re such a threat, why haven’t we been more aggressive in going after them?” Mancini asked.
“They make a lot of money,” Lane answered.
“What does that mean?”
“Their money-laundering activities provide a huge stream of income for major U.S. banks.”
Crocker’s stomach started to turn. The unethical activities of U.S. financial companies and banks, and the fact that they often operated against the interests of the U.S. government and the American people, formed a subject that he didn’t understand that well, but he knew enough to know it stank. Massive greed of that sort disgusted him.
Steele introduced the man with the short black hair. He was Bob Marion, a former CIA analyst who now worked as a high-level security consultant for several large multinational companies. His specialty, he said, was the Mexican cartels and their financial activities.
As coffee was served, Marion explained that since a number of Zetas leaders had been killed and arrested in 2011 and 2012, including two of its founders, Heriberto Lazcano, a.k.a. El Bronce, and Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, a.k.a. Z-40, some individual cell leaders had become more ambitious and started to advance their own agendas.
