The Polaris Protocol

by Brad Taylor

  There was nothing for a moment, then a woman’s voice in heavily accented English said, “Who are you? What do you want?”

  Jennifer stared into the camera and said, “I’m here to help. Please. Let us in.”

  She said, “Go away or I’m calling the police.”

  I thought for a split second about pushing the issue as if we were the kidnappers, just to get me in the door. Knowing that would be cruel. Before I could lean over, taking control, Jennifer said, “My brother is kidnapped by the same savages who have your son. I know they’re together. Please, please let me come up.”

  Her voice was dripping with emotion that couldn’t be faked. Instead of leaning forward, I leaned back lest they see me in the car and suspect a trick. The gates parted.

  We drove up a circular path and parked out front, the mansion much larger than what could be seen from the gate. Two men exited the top of the stairs, not overtly threatening, but not friendly either. We walked up, and one motioned to me, telling me to spread my arms. I did so, and was thoroughly searched. Not in a sloppy way, either. He literally cupped my balls, which told me he was doing it for real, as that is the last place a man will put his hands and the first place a killer will put his weapon because of it. He wasn’t an amateur, which meant his employer wasn’t either.

  He had me face to the left, putting Jennifer in my sight, and continued. For her part, I saw a man cup her breasts and knead. I suppose I should have been aggravated, but the guy did it like he was working a lump of dough and clearly had no ulterior motives. I began to wonder how the child of someone who hired professionals like this could have been kidnapped.

  They both stood up and waved to someone inside. For the first time, I noticed the sliding door behind us was four inches thick. A ballistic door. Bulletproof. They’d searched outside in case we were carrying a suicide vest.

  What the hell? Who is this guy? The only thing that came into my head was Keyser Söze.

  We were led into a room and met by not a man, but a woman of about fifty with a stern visage that exuded control. Someone who was clearly used to being in charge, but her trembling hands belied the act. In English, she said, “Who are you?”

  I said, “We’re here to help you. I promise.”

  She flicked her eyes at the man who’d searched me, and without a beat he punched my kidney, bringing me to my knees. He drew back to punch again, and I trapped his hand, gasping for breath.

  I rotated against the joint, then rolled over, bringing him with me to the ground. All I was thinking was escape. I saw the other man moving in and released the joint lock, collapsing my hands around my target’s head, screaming, “Stop, or I kill this motherfucker!”

  Everything paused like it was in slow motion. I said again, “Back off or he’s dead. Jennifer, go to the door.”

  She said, “No.” Then turned to the woman. “I want my brother, and you know where he is. You might not realize you know. But you do.”

  I heard the words and screamed, “Jennifer, get your ass outside the door, right now!” I saw the other man glide my way and torqued my target’s head. “Back off!”

  Jennifer shouted at the woman, “Your son is with my brother. Please, we need your help!”

  I heard someone shout, “Alto!”

  The guy in my arms relaxed as if on cue.

  30

  A man entered the room and said again, in a lower voice, “Alto.”

  He waved a finger, and the guard advancing on me faded back like a robot. The woman began to weep, sagging against the wall and putting her face in her hands.

  He looked at everyone in the room, guaranteeing compliance, then said, “I am Arturo Gomez, the father of Felix. Let him go and no harm will come to you.”

  I did so and the bodyguard stood up, then joined his partner, another robot under the control of the man who had entered. Both eyed us, ready to spring forth, but did nothing more. I rose from the ground and said, “I’m Pike Logan and this is Jennifer Cahill. Her brother has been taken and we believe it’s by the same people who hold your son. Any information you could give us would be appreciated.”

  “Are you American law enforcement?”

  Jennifer said, “No. Just family.”

  “Why should I trust you?”

  I said, “You should trust me more than the law around here. Who is that cop who just left?”

  “Why do you say that? He works with the kidnapping task force. He’s the lead investigator on my son’s case.”

  Of course. That’s why he had all the pictures. It made perfect logical sense now. Except the phone trace led to him, which meant he was helping the kidnappers by providing them all the information on the investigation. Possibly even setting up the snatches.

  I said, “I’m just paranoid, I guess. Can we sit down and talk?”

  He nodded and led us to an anteroom. After settling onto a couch, he began recounting the loss of his son, talking in a monotone as if he’d repeated the story a hundred times. The boy was a student at a university south of the city and had been taken from the campus. The last known location was about four miles away from the university, in a residential area where the suspects were seen driving. Not a whole lot of help.

  I said, “You have pretty good security here. Didn’t you have anything on your son?”

  “Yes. He had a bodyguard, who was killed trying to protect him. We found the corpse and my son’s car.”

  “But someone was left alive, right? Someone saw the suspect’s vehicle.”

  “No. Only the bodyguard was with him.”

  “Then how did you get the report that they’d been seen miles from the campus?”

  Arturo looked at his wife like he’d let something slip he shouldn’t have. She spoke in Spanish, and he nodded, then said, “My son has a tracking device implanted in his arm. We haven’t told anyone until today. The company that’s supposed to locate him told us to keep it a secret to protect him, but they have failed.”

  Great. They got suckered. There was a plethora of antikidnapping companies selling RFID chips the size of a grain of rice and claiming they had GPS capability, but in reality, all that thing could do was identify the body after it was dead because the chip could be read from only about three feet away. It was basically the same thing people used to identify runaway animals in the United States. The companies here made a fortune on services for the “tracking,” but the truth was it did little good because the actual locating device was the size of a cell phone, and once it was taken farther than three feet from the subject, it did no good.

  Two things about the statement caused me to think, though. One, this man was smart enough to do the research and would know it wouldn’t work, and two, there was a second location. If it wasn’t an eyewitness, then it was something else.

  I said, “Nothing small enough to embed under the skin could transmit a location. I’m sure you know this.”

  “Yes. I do. The actual transmitter is built into the belt he was wearing. It has a battery life of forty-eight hours once activated and is supposed to send a location every fifteen minutes. It only sent one.”

  “But it did send one? The residential location?”

  “Yes.”

  So it had worked at least once. “How does it send the location? What’s the method?”

  He said something to one of the bodyguards and the man left the room. He came back carrying a brochure. He handed it to me, and I saw the specifications of what was being billed as an “antikidnapping alert” device. I said, “So it works on the cell network, sending an SMS text to a server, which then plots on Google Maps?”

  “It’s supposed to. But it hasn’t since that one time.”

  Which meant the belt was without cell service. Unable to reach a tower. So to find it, we would need to bring the tower to it. Or it meant that the damn belt had been tossed. Think good th
ings. The belt is still active until proven otherwise.

  I said, “Can you get me the number of the belt? What it’s using to transmit to the company?”

  He nodded and rattled off some more Spanish. One of the bodyguards got on a phone, and something else Alex said finally penetrated.

  “You said you’ve not told anyone until today. Do you mean until you told us?”

  “No. I told the investigator just before you arrived. The company is doing no good, and I thought he could use the information.”

  Holy shit. Use it is right.

  I leapt to my feet, saying, “Jennifer, give him your contact information. Call her with the number as soon as you have it.”

  I dialed Knuckles and began giving instructions, walking at a fast pace to the front door.

  31

  The sicario listened to El Comandante rail and realized he was now finding threats in every shadow, paranoid. It was a cycle the sicario had seen many times before. When you assume the mantle of leadership through treachery and murder, you cannot retain control without starting to find the same everywhere, whether real or imagined.

  Hearing a break in the stream of vitriol, he said, “El Comandante, with all due respect, do you really think someone attacked Sinaloa so Los Zetas would remove you? There are many cartels vying for the Juárez plaza. Maybe it was Beltrán Leyva, or someone in the Gulf cartel. Sinaloa has many, many enemies.”

  “I’m being blamed for it! I have to travel to Matamoros to explain to the capo why I attacked them, and I had nothing to do with it. Sinaloa is going on war footing, and Los Zetas are not pleased. Someone is trying to get me out. That’s the only explanation. Someone who knows Juárez.”

  Someone like me, thought the sicario.

  “Do you wish me to go to Juárez? Attempt to find out what happened and punish those responsible?”

  El Comandante rubbed his face. “No. Take the journalist to the airport again today. I’d like to report some good news when I leave. Find the man coming from America and find out what he has that Sinaloa wants.”

  The sicario could read between the lines clearly enough. El Comandante no longer trusted him and wanted him close. He believed the sicario was involved in this ludicrous attack and feared what he would do once in Juárez.

  He said, “If the man doesn’t show today, what do you want me to do?”

  “Kill the journalist. Dump him in the desert, then return back here. You will be coming to Matamoros with me.”

  As an offering to the capo. The sicario betrayed nothing on his face, simply saying, “It will be done.”

  He entered the basement, seeing their new captive cowering in the corner, afraid to even meet his eyes. A young man, most likely from a rich family. The sicario was probably the foremost expert on the mechanics of kidnapping that Los Zetas had, but he’d never done it for money, like Los Zetas were known for in Mexico City. In Juárez, he did it for one thing, and no amount of money would alter his captive’s fate.

  He waved the journalist to his feet, feeling the irony of his work in Juárez. He had been tempted multiple times with huge amounts of cash but had always remained loyal to Los Zetas. Always executing exactly what the jefe wished, condemning his soul to hell in the process. Walking back up the stairs with the journalist in tow, he wondered if that loyalty would now be his death.

  * * *

  They had been on the road for close to thirty minutes, the sicario aggravated at the antics of the cars around him. Yesterday, the drive had been novel, not the least because he was operating a brand-new BMW 5 Series instead of the usual clunker that blended in around Juárez and allowed him to work his deadly skills. In Juárez a car like this would have been as bad as driving a fire truck with the lights spinning, but here it had been a diversion from the traffic. Now, the satellite radio, heads-up display, and other electrical wizardry no longer held his interest, and the idiots in the vehicles around him began to grate.

  With thoughts of his meeting with El Comandante swirling in his head, he uttered his first words to the journalist that weren’t a command.

  “Tell me, what is it like in the United States. Is it like here?”

  He heard nothing and glanced at the journalist in the passenger seat. The man sputtered for a moment, then said, “I . . . I don’t know what you mean.”

  The sicario said, “Do you live in fear? Do people in your cities fear men like me?”

  At first the journalist said, “Yes,” followed by a pause, then, “Well, no, that’s not true. There is no one like you in America. At least not in my world. The only people that run into men like you are criminals. If you do nothing wrong, you don’t have anything to fear. Unlike here.”

  The sicario pondered the statement, wondering how the journalist could believe such a thing. Surely his world and the journalist’s were not so removed from each other.

  He said, “Life is nothing but a series of interconnected events. There is no right and wrong, only moving forward, making the best of each circumstance. Good and bad is a myth to explain away things, nothing more.”

  When the journalist didn’t reply, he said, “Do you agree?”

  He could tell the man was working up his courage. He smiled and said, “There is no right or wrong answer, either.”

  Finally, the journalist said, “No. I don’t agree. We create our own destiny by the path we choose. Right and wrong do matter.”

  “So you’ve done something wrong on your path of life, and it led you to me. You deserve this?”

  The journalist’s eyes widened. “No! I’ve done nothing bad. I don’t deserve to be here.”

  The sicario stared at him for a moment, causing the journalist to turn away. He said, “And yet here you sit, next to me. A killer working for men who you would say have done only bad. How did right and wrong matter on your path, then?”

  The journalist said nothing, and the sicario was disappointed. He had hoped to glean some truth he had missed in his life. Hoped to learn a secret from another world he had yet to experience.

  They rode in silence for a few minutes. Then the journalist surprised him by asking, “Do you have a family?”

  “I did, but they’re dead now.”

  The journalist paused, then said, “May I ask how they died?”

  “In a war. They were killed in a raid.”

  “And you don’t think that’s wrong? When it happened, did you feel it was justice?”

  The images of the campesinos fleeing from his machete flashed in his mind, and he shunted them aside. The day before that attack, he had been told of the death of his mother and sister at the hands of the rebels, and his rage had flowed through the peasant village in retaliation. The campesinos were long dead, but their ghosts punished him still.

  He said, “When I was a child we had a coop of chickens. It was our livelihood, with my mother bartering the eggs for other things. One day, I went to feed them and found all of them slaughtered. A fox had come in the night and had killed every single one. He didn’t eat them. Just killed them. He had taken our livelihood. Was the fox evil?”

  The journalist said, “You can’t compare a chicken coop to human beings. The fox is an animal. He doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong.”

  The sicario pulled into the parking area for terminal one and said, “Or there is no right and wrong. Only interconnected events.” He turned off the car and said, “Do you see? Or do you have a different explanation for your fate?”

  The journalist seemed to withdraw into himself, disappointing the sicario yet again. He wanted a new truth. A new reason for what had happened in his life. Instead, it looked like he was instilling a new reality into the journalist. The one true reality.

  They entered the terminal, and, like before, the sicario muscled his way to the front, his slight frame not nearly as powerful in exacting compliance as his gaze. He po
sitioned the journalist and began to wait, sure he would end up killing the man in another couple of hours, and was a little sad at the prospect. He would have liked to talk again. Explore the differences in their lives a little more.

  Forty-five minutes in, growing more positive the journalist would be sacrificed, he was beginning to construct a plan for disposal of the body when he saw the man visibly start. Thinking he had spotted the courier, he followed the journalist’s gaze, then did a double take before his eyes reached the doors exiting customs, having a flash of recognition of a man on his side of the ropes.

  Carlos.

  He studied the face to be sure, then backed away. It was Carlos. A respected member of the Sinaloa cartel’s operations in Juárez, he had been marked for capture by Los Zetas numerous times but had always escaped either through luck or through a change in focus of El Comandante. The sicario had studied his life intently, learning his patterns and methods, and had nicknamed him El Traje because of his habit of always wearing a business suit, like he did today.

  Why is he here? El Comandante had said the leadership had been killed. Decimated in a military-type attack.

  He saw three men approach, and a discussion ensued. He wished he could hear what was being said, but the directional microphone was in the BMW, too large to use unobtrusively here.

  He sidled up to the journalist and said, “Did you see the man? Is he here?”

  His face white, he said, “No. No, he hasn’t come through.”

  Sure he would tell the truth if the man appeared, if only to save his life, the sicario said, “Who did you see?”

  The journalist ducked his head and said, “No one. I thought I saw him, but it wasn’t the right guy. He’ll come, though, right? He’ll come.”

  Carlos and the men began walking to the rental car counters, and the sicario had a choice: continue waiting here or follow them. Maybe Los Zetas’ information was only partially correct. Maybe someone was coming, but it wasn’t the man the journalist knew.