Rip Crew

by Sebastian Rotella

  Isabel had called Friday night to report that the FBI and HSI were consulting her as they formed a task force for the Blake case. They were moving slowly, however, apprehensive about the political snake pit that awaited. And it wasn’t clear if they would bring Isabel aboard. Her bosses had hard feelings about her secret investigation using Pescatore, his collaboration with the Italians, and his unilateral operation in Mexico. Even though the braver bosses—and Isabel—had to admit that things had worked out pretty well.

  Hopefully, this will be over soon, Isabel said on the phone. We will have a lot to talk about.

  Arriving at the park, Pescatore realized they were not in the right place. He got out of Athos’s Dodge Charger to ask people at the soccer field if they knew where the eleven-year-olds played.

  The freshly trimmed grass gleamed. Little kids swarmed the ball in a determined flurry of short legs. As Pescatore talked to Méndez on the phone, he felt lazy and mellow. He wondered what it would be like to be a father watching his son play soccer. He was thankful to be back in San Diego in one piece, taking it slow for a change.

  Then the sounds of the gunfight blared from the phone in his hand.

  Pescatore ran back to the car. Athos sped toward the entrance of the subdivision, looking around wildly. Pescatore yelled for Méndez to give him a location but heard only shots and screams. They spotted activity down a street on their right. The Charger roared up to the intersection. Facundo and Pescatore leaned out their windows, guns at the ready.

  There was a white sedan slewed across the street. Near it was Porthos’s GMC Sierra, which had been intercepted coming from the right. A blue Regal was angled in front of the pickup truck on the other side. The truck’s windshield was a riot of bullet holes and jagged cracks. Smoke hung in the air. Méndez and Porthos were not visible. A man in a backward baseball cap lay facedown on the concrete. The head and arm of another fallen man protruded from behind the Regal. A Hispanic gunman in a yellow T-shirt knelt behind the white car. He was reloading while glancing fearfully over the hood at the pickup. A gunman in a black shirt crouched in a combat stance by the Regal. He was tall and lean and had a crew cut. He was definitely Vincent Robles.

  Robles covered a fifth assailant, a short black guy with braids and a buff physique in a Clippers jersey and baggy jeans. Armed with a sawed-off shotgun, Clippers Jersey crept toward the front of the truck. He hunched very low, as if expecting shots from inside at any moment.

  The thing that terrified Pescatore was the lack of gunfire. Porthos and Méndez were incapacitated at best. The attackers were about to finish them off.

  Athos braked, and Pescatore and Facundo opened fire. Clippers Jersey and Robles went down. Pescatore swiveled his aim to Yellow Shirt, who fumbled his gun. It clattered onto the pavement. Yellow Shirt stayed on his knees, thrusting up his hands in surrender, eyes shut. He shouted, “Don’t kill me!”

  Pescatore resisted the urge to shoot him anyway.

  Pescatore, Facundo and Athos tumbled out of the car. Athos hurried toward the truck, pausing to ensure the fallen combatants weren’t a threat. Facundo approached Yellow Shirt at gunpoint, bellowing orders and curses. Pescatore spotted movement beyond the Regal.

  Robles was up and running. He clutched his belly with one hand and his gun with the other, but his loping, long-limbed strides covered ground. Pescatore hesitated. He wanted to help his friends, but he couldn’t let Robles escape. And he was the only one with the foot speed to catch him.

  “I’m going after Robles!” he shouted.

  “Careful,” Facundo said.

  Sprinting around the cars, Pescatore calculated that Robles had a half-block lead. But the man was leaking blood, his shirttails trailing like a cape, his arm tight over the gut wound. Pescatore pounded down the street. His left ankle throbbed. People appeared on lawns and in doorways. A siren wailed faintly.

  Robles darted to the right, up a driveway. Gaining fast, Pescatore cut onto the sidewalk. Robles glanced back, brought the gun up, and slung a shot at him. The bullet whined wide to the left. Pescatore ducked and cursed. He didn’t shoot back because he feared hitting civilians in the background. He followed the blood up the driveway, his gun out in front of him, and entered a yard in time to see Robles clambering over a back fence. Reaching the fence, Pescatore heard the deep bark of a big dog. It turned into a snarl and, after a gunshot, a whimper. In the yard on the other side of the fence, he came upon a dead Rottweiler with bared fangs. Someone yelled inside the house. The blood trail led him down a driveway, across the street, and up another driveway. More sirens wailed.

  He passed the house and went into the backyard, seeing no cars or residents, and spotted his prey running alongside a pool deck. Robles zigzagged around garden furniture. His gait was uneven, his head drooping lower and lower. Pescatore veered to a spot with a clear sight line. He stopped and took careful aim at Robles, who was staggering toward the back fence.

  “Drop the gun!” Pescatore yelled.

  Robles whirled. Pescatore fired. Robles banged into the fence and slid along it, leaving a smear of blood on wood.

  His heart pounding, Pescatore advanced in a two-handed crouch. Robles had come to rest with his head and part of his back against the fence. Pescatore stopped about ten feet from him. He put his foot on the pistol Robles had dropped. The chorus of sirens sounded closer, as if they were approaching the scene of the ambush.

  Robles was alive. His belly wound had pumped blood across his unbuttoned black shirt, olive T-shirt, and camouflage pants. There were more wounds in the left thigh and right side. The hit man had the long-muscled, narrow-waisted build of a basketball forward, his forearms corded and veined below rolled-up sleeves. He was clean-shaven and square-faced, a light complexion contrasting with thick, spiky, very black hair receding at the temples. He was not breathing as hard as might be expected after all that shooting, running, and bleeding.

  “Don’t move,” Pescatore said. “Don’t even twitch.”

  Mindful of the veteran’s reputation for hand-to-hand skills, Pescatore stooped warily. He pulled aside the shirt and patted around for extra weapons. Robles’s face was a mask of hate and pain.

  Pescatore straightened and stepped back. In a panic, he remembered the bullet-riddled pickup truck. Keeping the gun on his prisoner, he called Facundo. The Argentine answered, his voice full of exertion and emotion, a jabber of voices and vehicles in the background.

  “Are you all right, Valentín?”

  “I got him. Alive. What happened?”

  Facundo’s pause told him all he needed to know.

  “Porthos is gone, son. May he rest in peace.” Facundo choked up. “And Leo is very gravely wounded.”

  Anger flashed like heat lightning in Pescatore’s head.

  “Where are you?” Facundo asked.

  “No.” Pescatore made eye contact with Robles. He raised his voice. “No, don’t send the police over here. No ambulance either. Give me time with this fucker.”

  Pescatore hung up. He put the phone in his pocket. Robles’s eyes got big. Pescatore rammed the Glock into his brow, pinning the head back against the wood.

  “Lord give me strength.” The words came out in a sob. “Lord give me strength to blow this motherfucker’s brains out.”

  “The fuck you doing? You crazy?”

  The voice was deep and harsh—battlefield sergeant with a hint of barrio hoodlum. Despite the barrel digging into his forehead, Robles sounded more annoyed than frightened.

  Stone-cold bastard, Pescatore thought.

  “Open your mouth, Robles,” he snarled. “Taste this Glock before your skull explodes.”

  “Pendejo, you’ll do time.”

  “I don’t give a…no, you’re right. Wait.”

  Pescatore took three long paces backward. Robles pushed himself up to a sitting position, grimacing. Pescatore glanced around. No sign of police yet. He didn’t think anyone was in the house. But someone would follow the blood. The phone buzzed in his pocket:
Facundo calling. He ignored it.

  “I’m gonna shoot you from here,” Pescatore said. “Then I’m gonna put your gun in your hand.”

  He wasn’t sure what he was doing. He wanted to terrorize the man, put the fear of God in him, use the threat of violence to extract information. But when he had Robles in his sights, rage shuddered through him. It wasn’t an act anymore. He wanted to execute him. Impose immediate justice.

  Robles held his stare.

  Pescatore squeezed the trigger. The bullet hit the fence a foot above Robles’s head. The seated figure reared in surprise.

  Moving very slowly, Pescatore adjusted his aim downward. His voice was strangled.

  “The next one is going in your chest.”

  He saw fear in the eyes at last. Robles shouted, “Don’t do it!”

  “Why not?”

  “You need me.”

  “For what? Who can you give me?”

  Robles moaned. He was turning pale.

  “If I get a deal, and—”

  “Fuck that.” Pescatore stepped forward and took aim again. “No deals, no pleas, no lawyers and shit. I’ll kill your ass right now and get some real revenge. Give it up!”

  His wild-eyed roar was only partly a bluff.

  Robles coughed. An ugly sound. He contemplated the blood pooling around him in the grass, then looked up.

  “Jimmy Noonan,” he muttered. “Master Sergeant Jimmy Noonan. In the Antelope Valley. The middleman.”

  “For who?”

  “Krystak.”

  “Who gave the order to kill Abrihet Anbessa?”

  “Krystak.”

  “Why did you whack everybody?”

  “Make it look like narco activity.”

  “Who set up the hit in Italy?”

  “I don’t know shit about Italy.”

  “Does Noonan?”

  “Maybe. I know this: You got a leak. Krystak gets intel from DC.”

  Pescatore absorbed that statement, trying to make sense of it. He remembered reading the Blake company documents in Italy, the reports by someone with inside information. He thought about Isabel’s run-ins with forces in the government protecting the Blakes.

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “They fucked me. Used me and fucked me.”

  Robles pressed both hands to his belly, trying to stop the blood flow. Moaning, he drew up his knees.

  Pescatore heard voices in the street. He didn’t have much time. He stepped closer.

  “And today,” he said. “Krystak ordered the hit today?”

  Robles shook his head, eyelids lowered.

  “No.”

  “Whaddaya mean, no?”

  “Méndez was my idea.”

  Robles was mumbling now. Pescatore bent toward him.

  “What? Why?”

  The eyes closed. Pescatore kicked the wounded leg. Robles gasped through clenched teeth. The eyes opened.

  Pescatore repeated, “Why?”

  “Fucker put me all over the news. Everybody chasing my ass. Bothering my mother. He had to pay for that shit. I hired some vatos. Discount dumb-fucks, but we took care of him good.”

  It sounded true, and it explained the sloppy ambush. Robles had been forced to recruit second-stringers. Why would he lie after the things he had confessed? Pescatore felt like throwing up.

  Robles groaned. His eyes fluttered shut.

  “Hey,” Pescatore said. “Don’t die yet. Looks like you—”

  Robles pulled a spring knife hidden in his right hiking boot and propelled himself up off the fence with startling power and speed. Pescatore flinched. The long lethal arm swept the blade at his jugular.

  Thinking about it afterward, he had to admit the move was masterful. Robles had given up golden information, exaggerated his agony, drawn Pescatore close until he sensed his guard was down. If Robles hadn’t been wounded, if he could have snared Pescatore with his free hand, it might have worked. But Robles was too far from him and too weak.

  Pescatore reared away from the slashing knife. He stumbled backward, firing repeatedly, bracing his fall with his left hand on the grass, still firing. Half a dozen rounds stopped Robles in midlunge—a collision with an invisible counterforce. He jerked stiff and upright, dead on his feet, a vertical corpse. He toppled sideways and rolled onto his back.

  Pescatore got up and caught his breath. He saw the dead man’s lips stretched above the front teeth, like the Rottweiler’s.

  Vincent Robles. El T. The killing machine. The sergeant who wanted to be a lieutenant. The chief executive of the rip crew. The material author, as Méndez would say, of the butchery at the border.

  The thought of Méndez, and then Porthos, brought tears to his eyes. Two more names on the casualty list. Pescatore was lucky not to be on it himself. He had assumed Robles would want to cooperate and try to swing a deal. But the guy knew he’d go to prison for years no matter what. Concluding that Méndez’s article had doomed him, he had decided to bring down everyone he could. That’s why he had fingered Noonan and Krystak. That’s why he had tried to keep killing until he died.

  Pescatore heard brakes, sirens, doors slamming. He holstered his gun. He didn’t want to get blown away by rattled cops.

  Because he had things to do.

  The first officers who ventured into the backyard were a youthful Asian and a blond guy with the look of an ex-surfer. They came in warily, with drawn guns and a lot of adrenaline.

  “Show me some hands, man!” The quaver in the Asian’s voice indicated that it was the first time he’d seen the results of a Tijuana-style gunfight up close and personal.

  Pescatore’s hands were already up. His tone was reassuring. “Easy, Officers. I’m on your side. Pescatore, Homeland Security Investigations. Those are my partners who got shot in the pickup.”

  Once he had been disarmed, things calmed down. The officers had come from the scene of the ambush, where Facundo had explained the situation. Thinking fast, as always, Facundo had conveyed the impression that Pescatore’s affiliation with the Department of Homeland Security was more formal than it really was. The Asian officer even called him “Agent Pescatore” as they questioned him in the street. They requisitioned his gun as evidence. Pescatore asked about Méndez. His condition was critical.

  Half an hour later, the officers dropped him off at the hospital, where they said detectives would interview him. As Pescatore got out of the squad car, the Asian cop said he had read about Méndez and his police squad that had tried to clean up corruption in Tijuana. He said he was sorry for Pescatore’s loss.

  My loss, he thought, entering the lobby of the hospital. What did Leo say in Madrid? Every game I play, I lose.

  He had intended to rush to the emergency room. Instead of following the signs to the right, though, he obeyed a sudden impulse and kept going straight. Down a hall, through glass doors, into a courtyard off a cafeteria. Doctors, nurses, orderlies, and visitors ate at outdoor tables. There were benches beneath vegetation. He sat on a bench in a corner and pulled out his phone. A quick Internet search found three Noonans in the Antelope Valley. The most likely candidate was a J. Noonan in his forties who owned a security business in Palmdale.

  Pescatore got up. He wanted to find out how Méndez was doing. As he walked back through the glass doors, three men strode purposefully through the street entrance and into the lobby. A blue windbreaker, a certain style of khaki pants, sunglasses dangling from a neckband, a fanny pack big enough for a service weapon. The details told him they were law enforcement even before he recognized an FBI supervisor named Deming who had interviewed him after the rescue of Abrihet Anbessa.

  Pescatore averted his eyes and ducked into a newsstand on his right. Hiding behind shelves of candies and magazines, he watched the agents hurry toward the emergency room.

  He waited thirty seconds. Head down, he went out and hailed a taxi in line at the curb. He gave the driver the name of his hotel in Mission Beach. In the backseat, he slid down low.


  If he had gone to check on Méndez, he wouldn’t have been able to leave. The FBI and the police homicide unit wanted to talk to him. That would take time. And he would be forced to decide whether to disclose Noonan’s name. He believed Robles had told the truth about Krystak having inside federal sources. Once Pescatore gave up the information, he couldn’t control it. He didn’t want Krystak or his bosses finding out that the good guys had identified Robles. Right now, Pescatore didn’t trust anyone in the government except Isabel.

  In the cab, he did more research on his phone. Not much data on J. Noonan, but he was originally from Riverside, like Robles, and known as James and Jimmy. Noonan’s firm in Palmdale was called Master Sergeant Security Consulting. Robles had referred to him by that rank. It had to be the same guy. His company supplied home-protection systems and security personnel to individuals and businesses. There were records in the Antelope Valley of a divorce three years ago and the purchase of a home seven years ago.

  Pescatore congratulated himself for having asked for a backup piece when Athos had handed out guns at his son’s house. The Bersa Thunder .380 was locked in the hotel-room safe. Pescatore put the pistol in his computer bag with the laptop, ammunition clips, and a pair of handcuffs. He threw clothes in a suitcase, grabbed water bottles and chocolate bars from the mini-refrigerator, got in his rented Impala, and hit the I-5 freeway going north.

  Missed calls and texts beeped on his phone. Facundo wanted to know where he was. Pescatore sent a text message: Busy. Talk soon. Anything he told Facundo would put his boss in a bad position if the FBI asked about Pescatore. He preferred to keep Facundo in the dark rather than expose him to problems with the feds.

  The Camp Pendleton Marine base in north San Diego County was coming into view when a radio station gave a report about the gunfight. Days after making news with bombshell accusations against the Blake Acquisitions Group, Mexican journalist Leo Méndez had been wounded in an ambush. He was in critical condition and undergoing surgery. He had been shot eight times.