by Tom Clancy
They went into the crowded station, where at least fifteen people in dusty clothes sat in chairs, their expressions long. Rueben immediately concluded that they’d all been trying to sneak through the checkpoint and had probably been caught at the same time. Perhaps they’d been hiding within a tractor-trailer’s load or other such large shipment. A mother and two small girls were sitting there, and the woman was sobbing. Six or seven Border Patrol personnel manned positions behind a long counter, and one agent was trying to explain to an old man that anyone carrying as much cash as he had needed to be searched and detained, the money declared.
Rueben steeled himself against the scene and hurried after Ansara down a long, sterile-looking hall. Rueben had never been inside the facility, and his pulse began to mount as Ansara opened the door to what was a small interrogation room where another young man about Rueben’s age sat at the table, brooding. He was a white kid with brown hair and freckles. His arms were covered in tattoos, and he wore a skull earring made of gold.
Ansara closed the door. “Have a seat.”
Rueben complied, and the other kid just kept staring through the table.
“Rueben, this is Billy.”
“What’s up?” Rueben asked.
“Dude, you have no fucking idea,” the kid groaned, still not bothering to look up.
Rueben looked his question at Ansara. “What’s going on? Am I in trouble or something? What did I do?”
“I’ll cut to the chase. They recruit you kids out of the high schools, so we always start there. A couple of your friends tipped us off because they’re afraid for you. I also made a promise to your sister — but don’t worry …she won’t tell your parents. Now, I brought Billy down here to show you something. Show him, Billy.”
The kid suddenly shoved his chair back and propped both of his bare feet up on the table.
He had no toes.
Every one of them had been hacked off, the scars still fresh and pink, and so ugly that Rueben tasted bile in the back of his throat.
“I lost a load worth fifty thousand. I’m only seventeen, so they worked it out so I only got probation. Doesn’t matter, though. They came across the border for me. Caught me one day after class. Threw me in a van. Look what those fuckers did to me.”
“Who?”
“Your buddy Pablo, and his boss, Corrales. They chopped off my toes — and they’ll do it to you, too, the moment you fuck up. Get out now, bro. Get out right fucking now.”
A knock came at the door. Ansara answered and stepped outside to speak to an agent.
“They really did that to you?”
“What do you think? Fuck, dude, you think I’ll ever get laid again? You think any woman is going to be attracted to a guy with these fucking feet?” He threw back his head and started crying, and then he began screaming, “Ansara! I want out! Get me the fuck out of here! I’m done!”
The door opened, and Ansara appeared, waving Billy outside. The kid rose and hobbled to the door, carrying a pair of odd-looking boots under his arm.
The door closed again.
And Rueben sat there alone for five, ten, fifteen minutes, his imagination running wild. He saw himself in prison, being trapped in the shower by fourteen potbellied gang members who wanted him as their little bitch — all because he wanted to go to college and make some extra money. He wasn’t a rocket scientist. The scholarships wouldn’t help very much. He needed the cash.
Abruptly, Ansara returned and said, “Your car has a very unique dashboard and gas tank.”
“Fuck,” Rueben said and gasped.
“You think because you’re not eighteen you’ll just get released or put on probation?”
Rueben couldn’t help it. He began to cry.
“Listen to me, kid. We know the cartel’s spotters are out there, watching all of this. We made it look like we didn’t find anything. You’ll finish your run today. You’ll deliver the drugs. But now you work for me. And we have a lot to discuss …”
16 BACKSEAT DRIVER
Bonita Real Hotel
Juárez, Mexico
The only way Moore could stop thinking about Rana’s murder was to focus on the moment, on the two men who had been following him. They were now parked across the street from the hotel. They must be bored out of their minds, he thought. They’d been sitting there for two hours, just playing with their cell phones and watching the front door and parking lot. While some aspects of the cartel were highly sophisticated, others, like human surveillance, were crude and rudimentary. A few times they even got out of their Corolla (with a front quarter-panel that was red, although the rest of the car was white) and leaned on the trunk, smoking cigarettes and repeatedly looking in the hotel’s direction. These young studs were geniuses, all right, and Moore could see why they’d been given the flunky job of tailing him. Any sicario worth his salt would never entrust money, guns, or drugs to a couple of stooges like this. When he’d returned, Moore had observed two spotters on the hotel’s roof, both dressed like construction workers, but they were security to alert Corrales and his cronies of any attacks on the hotel itself. Whether they were in contact with his tail Moore wasn’t sure.
Moore had photographed the two punks by the car several times already and sent the pics back home, where analysts identified them and searched Mexican police files for more data. Both men had records, mostly petty stuff — burglary and drug possession — thus neither of them had done any serious time. They were marked in their police files as “suspected cartel members.” Somewhere out there was a Mexican police detective with a keen eye for the obvious.
Moore sent a text message to Fitzpatrick, who replied and said they were not members of the Sinaloa Cartel and most assuredly worked for Corrales.
That was a disappointment, and a problem, because he was trying to goad the Sinaloas into a meeting via his real estate inquiry, but Fitzpatrick said neither he nor Luis Torres had been given orders to pick up the American at the hotel.
Moore pondered that before answering a call from Gloria Vega.
“I’ll make this fast,” she said. “We engaged some cartel members. Fitzpatrick confirmed they were Zúñiga’s boys. Three Juárez guys killed. The police are scared, and Gómez is in deep. He might be the key player and best link to the cartel. He’s carrying two phones, and the read I get from the others at the station is that he’s a god there. I think the best I can do is gather enough evidence on him, then flip him and see how many more he’ll hand us. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no way around it. We’ll have to cut a deal with him.”
“Don’t feel bad about that.”
“I don’t. I just feel bad because he won’t hand us everyone, and this just slows them down. That’s all.”
“Whatever we can do, we do it. Without exception.”
“Yeah, I get that. Or at least I’m trying to.”
Her cynicism was understandable but taxing, so he changed the subject. “Hey, you hear about that big bust in Puerto Rico?”
“Yeah, another huge score for the Bureau.”
“Our time will come, trust me. Just hang tight.”
“That’s not easy. Gómez is a male chauvinist pig. My tongue’s already sore from biting it.”
Moore softened his tone. “Well, if anybody can get it done, you can.”
She snorted. “How the hell do you know?”
“Trust me, pretty lady, your reputation precedes you.”
“Okay, talk soon.” She hung up.
Their call was, of course, encrypted and would not show up on her phone, the bill, or anywhere else, for that matter. If the Agency wanted a communication record to go away, it went away. Period.
Moore got an alert from Towers about a shooting at the Monarch strip club, where their bestest buddy Dante Corrales liked to hang out. Local police had arrived. No one injured, just shots fired, and the gunmen had fled. He mused that in the city of Juárez the TV stations needed to start reporting on the day’s shootings, as though they were tempera
ture and humidity levels.
After checking the window once more to see that his two super-thugs were still down there, Moore slipped on a baggy hoodie to conceal his Glock and shoulder holster, then left his room. He figured he’d drive across town to the V Bar. Fitzpatrick had said that the Sinaloa sicarios often hung out there.
As Moore drove into the parking lot, his thoughts took him back to Rana and the cheesy Batman joke. He’d introduced Rana to the Special Forces guys as his sidekick, “Robin,” and the kid’s frown warranted an explanation, but Moore had forgotten all about that.
As he stiffened and tightened his fists, imagining his young friend’s murder all over again, he wasn’t aware of the man behind him until he felt something blunt and solid — the barrel of a pistol, presumably — jammed into the back of his head.
“Easy,” said the man in English, his voice deep and burred, as though from a lifetime of tobacco use. “Raise your arms.”
Moore rarely disconnected from his immediate surroundings; such a lapse could wash him out of the Special Activities Division, possibly the Agency itself. But losing Rana was like losing a kid brother, and giving in to his frustration and anger had — just that quickly — derailed his focus.
The man checked Moore’s hips, then reached up and almost immediately felt the shoulder holster. He tugged down the hoodie’s zipper, threw back the Velcro strap on the holster, and removed Moore’s Glock.
“Now get in and start it.”
Moore gritted his teeth, cursing himself for the error and feeling his pulse rise against the unknown. He wasn’t sure what the guy had done with his gun, but he could still feel the other one on his head. Too close. Too risky to make a move. He could knock one gun away only to find the other pointed at his chest. Boom. Shot with his own Glock. “You’re the boss,” he said. He slowly climbed into the car, and the man quickly wrenched open the back door and hopped into the seat behind him, pressing the gun once more to the back of Moore’s head.
“Do you want the car?” Moore asked. “My money?”
“No ese. Just do what I say.”
Moore pulled out of the parking lot, and in the rearview mirror he spotted the two guys in the Corolla hopping in their heap to follow.
He also caught a glimpse of the man in the backseat, his beard graying, his curly hair gone to ash. He wore a blue sweatshirt and jeans, and had a gold hoop earring in his left ear. His eyes remained narrow in a permanent squint. He was a far cry from the punks in the car behind them, and his English was surprisingly good. Those fools were already tailing them, though Moore wasn’t sure if they could see he was being abducted, and he wasn’t sure if his abductor was aware of them yet, either.
He drove on for another minute, made a right turn as ordered, then said, “There’s a car behind us, the Toyota with the red panel. Two men following. Are they with you?”
The man in the backseat whirled, saw the car, and cursed in Spanish.
“What do we do now?” Moore asked.
“Keep driving.”
“I guess they’re not your friends?”
“Shut up!”
“Look, if you don’t want the car or my money, then what’s the deal here?”
“The deal is you drive.”
Moore’s cell phone began to ring. Shit. It was tucked into his front pocket, and the guy had failed to find it.
“Don’t even think about it,” warned the man.
The ringtone indicated that Fitzpatrick had sent him a text message, and if that message had anything to do with Moore’s passenger, then Fitzpatrick was a day late and a dollar short with his warning.
“Throw that fucking phone out the window.”
Moore reached down into his pocket, set the phone on vibrate by holding down the side button, then threw the phone’s leather slipcase out of the window before the guy could get a good look at it.
“Where are we going?” he asked, sliding the phone back into his pocket.
“No more questions.”
Moore checked the mirror once more, while his abductor stole a look back at the punks following them.
The car tailing them began to accelerate, and the gap narrowed to within two car lengths. The man in the backseat grew more agitated — shifting forward and tossing repeated looks out the rear window. He was panting now, his pistol still trained on Moore’s neck. He’d tucked Moore’s Glock into his waistband. Moore slowed as the light ahead turned red. He glanced around: Wendy’s, Denny’s, McDonald’s, Popeyes, and Starbucks. All five of the food groups. For a moment, he thought he was back in San Diego, with the smog and stench of gasoline and exhaust fumes finding their way inside the air-conditioned car. Bad part of town. Bad guy in the backseat. Just another day on the farm.
“Why are you stopping?” shouted the guy.
Moore gestured with a hand. “Red light!”
“Go, go, go!”
But it was too late. The car behind them rushed up, and the two guys leapt out and began firing.
“No, no, no!” Moore shouted as he hit the gas and squealed away into the intersection, burning rubber and narrowly avoiding a pickup truck whose tailgate was nearly dragging along the ground.
The two clowns behind them were intent on emptying their magazines, the shots thumping into Moore’s trunk as the back window shattered, along with the rear driver’s side, and Moore’s passenger released a strangled cry.
Moore glanced back and wished he hadn’t. The man lay there with gunshot wounds to his head and shoulder.
The man wasn’t moving. Blood pooled onto the seat. Moore cursed.
A quick glance to the rearview mirror showed that the guys had rushed back to their car, jumped in, and were continuing after him. They’d bridged the intersection and were weaving around two small sedans.
Ahead lay another cross street, and farther out, the “better” part of the barrio, with tin roofs held down with nails instead of old truck tires. Moore wasn’t sure where he was now, and had planned to use his smartphone’s GPS to get him to the bar. No time to program that info into the phone now …
But he tugged out the device anyway and thumbed a direct-dial number to Langley. A familiar man’s voice answered on the speakerphone: “Three-two-seven here. What do you need?”
“Get me to the V Bar. Update Fitzpatrick.”
“On it. Hold on …”
Moore checked his rearview mirror once more, while the two fools chasing him swerved in front of a step van, and the driver floored it toward the next intersection.
Just as Moore’s car passed through the intersection, the light turned red behind him.
An old man rode into the street on a bike fitted with baskets fore and aft. The baskets were piled high with blankets and plastic bottles and several backpacks. He was in the crosswalk, along with several pedestrians shifting a few meters behind him.
The idiots tailing Moore could not stop in time.
The man and the bike arced up and over their car like toys flung in the air, and their car’s hood folded in like a taco, but they kept on, the man and bike clattering out of sight behind them, the other pedestrians screaming and running back toward him.
A voice buzzed from the phone’s speaker: “Next left. Make it. Then third light, right turn. I’ll call the local police and see if they can run some interference for you. I’ve got eyes in the sky on your position now. See your tail.”
“Thanks.” Moore jammed his foot harder onto the accelerator as the next light ahead turned yellow. He’d already noticed that in Juárez, red, yellow, and green lights were mere suggestions to drivers. Many only slowed down for red lights, then just blew on through them — even if they weren’t involved in car chases. He made the left turn as instructed.
The street sign read Paseo Triunfo de la República, and the bus stops, billboards, and clean sidewalks of this business district made Moore feel a bit more at ease. Pedestrian traffic was fairly heavy, and he thought the rocket scientists behind him might think twice about pulling
any stunts in this area.
He scanned the side streets as he raced by, noting how they were lined on both sides by parked cars. You could travel only in one direction, but there were no signs to indicate that the roads were one-way.
The knuckleheads behind him were gaining, and the passenger slid out onto the windowsill and leveled his pistol.
That was it. Third light. “Three-two-seven? I won’t need you anymore, thanks.”
“Are you sure?”
“Roger that. I’ll check in later.”
Holding his breath, Moore hung the hard right down the next side street and floored it. He gasped as he rocketed down the alley, turned another hard left, careened off a Dumpster, and kept on moving. He was coming up behind the V Bar, which would be on his left-hand side.
He checked his six o’clock — clear for now.
A car shot across the intersection ahead and turned head-on, and with a start he realized it was the punks following him. They’d anticipated his move. They were supposed to be dummies. What was wrong with them? Why had they gone smart? Now they were playing chicken, and Moore had nowhere to go.
He reached into the backseat, tried to grab one of the guns — the guy’s on the floor or the Glock tucked into the dead man’s waistband — but both were still out of reach.
Then he slowed, was about to throw it in reverse, when another car raced up behind him, an older Range Rover with a huge Hispanic male at the wheel — big as a sumo wrestler or Samoan warrior — and Moore’s colleague and fellow JTF team member Fitzpatrick was riding shotgun. Were they the cavalry or the execution squad? Either way, Moore was sandwiched between members of rival cartels with a body in his backseat.
Consequently, he did what his training dictated. He prepared to abandon ship. He threw the car in park, whirled back and seized his Glock, then tossed himself out the door, rolling across the pavement to the cover of two parked cars. The driver’s door turned into a pincushion for small-arms fire.
God helps those who help themselves. Time for Moore to help Moore.
He crawled around to the back of the car, stole another look to the street, and saw that the two men following him were dead, their backs peppered with gunshot wounds.
