The Polaris Protocol

by Brad Taylor

  Carlos said, “Put the computer on the table and turn it on. Show me how it works.”

  Booth did as he was told, then said, “Do you have Wi-Fi? Internet here?”

  Carlos looked bewildered for a moment, then said, “No.”

  “It won’t work without a connection to the Internet.” When he saw Carlos’s face grow dark, he whined, “I’m telling the truth! Think about it, I have to connect to the satellites somehow. I can show you how it works, but I can’t prove it does without Internet.”

  Carlos stared at him, and Booth was sure he was considering putting a bullet in his head. Eventually, he sat down in front of the laptop and said, “Show me.”

  Booth pulled up his stereo interface and began to explain, detailing how to control the protocol. He was discussing the equalizer tabs and how they corresponded to sections of the earth when someone knocked on the door.

  Carlos jerked his head at the noise and drew his pistol. He held a finger to his lips and crept to the door. He leaned in, putting his eye against the peephole.

  Booth heard a cough, no louder than a hand clap, then saw Carlos’s head snap back. He felt a spray of liquid like someone had popped a wet towel near his face, then watched Carlos crumple straight down.

  In shock, Booth touched his face, and his hand came away with a viscous fluid tinged in red. His mouth opened and closed like that of a fish gasping on a dock, and the door exploded inward. What entered was something out of the Brothers Grimm. A man of normal height, wearing normal clothes. Normal ended at the neck. The man had no hair on his head, and his forehead was smudged, as if someone had sculpted a bust and then scraped the forehead in anger before it was set.

  In his hand was a large pistol, pointed directly at Booth’s head. The barrel didn’t register at all because of the death above the sights. A hypnotic stare coming from beyond the world Booth lived within.

  The golem said, “Close the computer.”

  Booth did so without hesitation, waiting on a further command, the sweat spreading on his body like a rash. The man said, “Make any indication you do not want to comply and you will be dead. Do you understand?”

  Booth nodded furiously.

  “Follow me.”

  Booth stood, and for the first time noticed another man on the landing, crouching down and holding his arms over his head.

  The man looked up, and he saw it was a gringo.

  43

  I did a double take in my rearview, noticing that the statue behind the cross was a skeleton. “What the hell is that?”

  Jennifer set her smartphone down and glanced backward. “It’s a church for Santa Muerte, the patron saint of death. It’s a bastardization of Catholicism, and pretty popular with those on the illegal side of things.”

  Leave it to her to actually know the answer.

  “You mean it’s some kind of cult?”

  Jennifer said, “Yes and no. It’s not a cult like you mean, with only a few people belonging to it. La Santa Muerte’s huge down here, but it’s also definitely frowned upon by the Church. The Mexican government thinks it’s nothing but a way for the drug cartels to sanctify what they’re doing, and it’s officially illegal, but I guess around here being illegal doesn’t mean a whole lot.”

  We were just south of Eje 1 Norte, only a half mile or so from the tourist area of the historic district and the president’s palace, but had crossed some border that separated the good guys from the bad. The Tepito barrio was just across the road, and according to all the research I could find, it was about as bad an area as I could possibly imagine. Known as the thieves’ market since colonial times, the barrio was home to every sort of illegal activity, from prostitution to gun running, and the people who lived there were known throughout Mexico as fighters. Tough guys who took pride in their rough-and-tumble existence.

  Merchandise was sold throughout in all manner of tiny little shops or right out in the streets, each alley clogged with stolen, smuggled, or counterfeit items. The people here knew which alley to go to for drugs, weapons, CDs, or phones, but we didn’t have a clue. All we knew was that the little blue marble on our smartphone, representing the BMW from the narco’s kidnapping house, was located in the heart of the barrio.

  After we’d dropped off Felix yesterday, his father had taken Jennifer and me to a BMW dealer to see what we could do with the key fob. The dealer was closed because of the late hour, but Arturo had pulled some strings. I’d heard him shouting into a phone and figured his son’s rescue was paying off.

  I’d wanted to go just by myself, because it was a long shot and I didn’t want to get Jennifer’s hopes up. I wasn’t sure what the thinking would be back home and needed to contact Kurt Hale before I did anything else. The last thing I wanted was for Jennifer to think we were still on the hunt for her brother, only to have the Oversight Council pull us home. I’d probably end up tying her to the airframe to prevent her from doing something stupid.

  After a little baksheesh exchanged hands, courtesy of Arturo, the BMW dealer read the fob. It turned out that not only did it work the doors, ignition, and windows, but it had the maintenance records for the car stored on its embedded chip, including the VIN and other identifying characteristics. In other words, a partial lead. It would take some hefty convincing to make the lead pan out, as I’d have to get the Taskforce to penetrate BMW of North America and create a BMW Assist account tied to the VIN for us to track the vehicle.

  It was almost a 100 percent guarantee that the narco didn’t have that sort of thing operational in his car—what crook would want Big Brother to have the ability to track him?—but it was about only a 50 percent chance that he’d taken the extra step of removing all the electronic infrastructure that allowed the feature to work, especially since that infrastructure was probably threaded throughout other operational capabilities like arteries in a body.

  We’d taken the information back to our hotel in the Zona Rosa and I’d given the team what little we had, telling them to return to their rooms for some shut-eye. We all needed some decompression time after the activities of the past couple of days, and I wasn’t sure when we’d get another chance. It was the way of such operations. You might get sleep for the next four months because the command decided to pull the plug, or you might be up for the next four days.

  Used to the stop-and-go, they left, but Jennifer had stayed behind. I let her, given her brother’s life was at stake.

  I had contacted Kurt on our company VPN, an encrypted network that bounced around forever through various ISPs to cloak who I was calling. He took the information, but, as expected, he was decidedly lukewarm on doing anything with it.

  Jennifer, behind me and off camera from the VPN, had pleaded with him, trying the same hand she had with me about a threat to the GPS constellation, but he wasn’t buying it, and I understood why. Hell, I wasn’t even buying it. The evidence was simply too weak, and we were literally flying by the seat of our pants down here, conducting operations without a shred of backup should someone get rolled up.

  In the end, Kurt said he’d prep the intelligence picture—a nice way of saying he’d have the hacker cell penetrate BMW—but we were to stand down until further notice. We agreed to talk again the following morning, and I signed off.

  After the call had ended, I’d sat for a minute reflecting. Jennifer had cleared her throat, reminding me she was in the room, and I told her to go get some rest. She didn’t move.

  I joked, “What? You want to sleep in my room tonight?”

  She slowly shook her head and said, “No. Not with your attitude about my brother.”

  Trying to lighten the mood, I said, “Usually the woman waits a little longer in the relationship to start withholding favors to get what she wants.”

  Jennifer’s face was flint. Not a bit of humor at all. She said, “Usually the man I sleep with isn’t such a callous ass.”

&nb
sp; I realized the joke was a mistake. I’d just brought our relationship into the equation of what should have been a team member–team leader discussion. I needed to get that back.

  “Jennifer, listen to me closely. I care about your brother, and I’ll do whatever I can within the limits of what’s possible, but right now, you need to get your head on straight. This is a Taskforce operation, period.”

  She said, “You never seemed to care about that in the past. You always did what you thought was right, regardless of Taskforce rules. Remember in Prague? You rescued all those sex slaves when you could have simply used a beacon. Now, when it’s someone I care about, you’ve turned into a by-the-book soldier.”

  It was true, I’d taken a significant risk assaulting a house full of Albanian Mafia who were trafficking in young girls, but she was failing to remember that the only reason I’d done it was because she had demanded the assault. I thought it prudent to let that remain unspoken.

  “Jennifer, one of those girls could have positively ID’d the terrorist. That’s why we went. Just like we did today, in case you have forgotten. We just hit a house we thought was holding your brother, but he wasn’t there. I’m sure there were a few girls out the night we hit the house, and we didn’t go running around the countryside chasing them.”

  “Because the girl with the knowledge was there. If she hadn’t been, you might have chased her down.”

  I said, “Jennifer, please . . . don’t make this hard. You know I’m correct here. Don’t make me play team leader.”

  She took my hand and said, “I don’t want my team leader. He’s kind of an asshole. I want my Pike back.”

  Damn it. Unfair.

  “Jennifer, listen, if we’re stood down tomorrow, that’s the end of it. They’ll take the aircraft and head home and there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t call a Prairie Fire for your brother.”

  She held my eyes. “I’m not asking them. I’m asking you. If they fly home, we stay and find my brother. Just the real Grolier Recovery Services. That’s all I want.”

  She stared into my soul, waiting for an answer I knew damn well I couldn’t give, but my resistance was eroding just from her presence. I was beginning to wonder if I’d lost the ability to control my own fate. If somehow she’d planted a chip in my head and had a remote control in her purse.

  She was the exact opposite of me, always following the rules and chastising me for bending them—or breaking them outright. Now she was begging to do exactly that. I should have found it a relief, like I was rubbing off on her, but I didn’t. All I felt was a loss of control. Well, my conscious brain did anyway. My subconscious was another matter entirely, and it apparently held more sway.

  “Okay. Damn it, okay. We’ll find your brother.”

  She smiled. “That wasn’t so hard, now, was it?” She kissed me, then moved to the bed.

  I said, “What, now you want to stay?”

  She propped a pillow under her head and lay down. “I always want to stay when Pike’s in the room. That asshole team leader is a different story.”

  Christ. She drives me batshit.

  She leaned to face me and smiled. “You going to sleep on the floor tonight?”

  The comment meant more than the words alone. It was something she’d said a long time ago, in Bosnia, when we were both being hunted and she didn’t trust me as far as she could throw me. Whatever remote control she had was obviously tied to her mouth.

  I thought about saying the exact same thing I had in Bosnia, then curling up with a pillow next to the bathroom. Well, for a nanosecond anyway. I’m not that stupid.

  We’d gotten a hell of a lot less sleep than we should have and then had to wake up extra early to allow her to execute her little walk of shame back to her room before the team showed up. I felt like I was in high school, but she insisted. I guess it would have been a little awkward with her being the ”first” to arrive while wearing the same clothes she had on yesterday, her hair looking like she’d just awakened.

  As it was, Knuckles was the first in, knocking on my door a mere two minutes after Jennifer had left. He took one look at me and shook his head.

  What, is it painted on my face?

  I said, “You’re getting here a little early, aren’t you? I was going to sleep in, glad I didn’t.”

  He rolled his eyes, pushed past me, and said, “Shut up. I saw her get in the elevator.”

  I said, “Who?”

  Before he could answer, another Johnny Eager Beaver knocked on my door. I let in Decoy, and the conversation was dead. Thirty minutes later, everyone had arrived but Jennifer. When she entered, Knuckles caught her eye and gave a theatrical scowl. She winked at him, just to rub his face in it, I suppose.

  Oh, man. His scowl turned real. I glared at her, then got the room’s attention. I brought them up to speed, telling them about the VPN last night and the potential for future operations, which, given the current state of affairs, wasn’t that great.

  They broke for breakfast and I waited with dread for the morning VPN with Kurt. Honestly, I didn’t see how I was going to access the BMW data if Kurt told the team to stand down. I might be able to do it from DC, but Mexico was a different kettle of fish. The hacking cell activities were taken about as seriously as an actual hit, and getting them to work unauthorized would take some creative skill. Skill that might get me kicked out of the Taskforce for good.

  The VPN initiated, and I found out how quickly things could change overnight, along with a reminder that I should watch the news while on operations. A horrific airline crash due to some GPS blip had caused the Oversight Council to switch into full-alert mode, and we were given carte blanche to find Jennifer’s brother. Kurt and I both agreed that it wasn’t going to do anything against whatever threat was out there, but it sure made me happy. I could have my cake and eat it too.

  Six hours later, I was sitting with Jennifer outside the Santa Muerte cult of death church, and the blue marble marking the BMW was blinking steadily inside Tepito. The narco hadn’t gutted the system from his car, and the Taskforce penetration had worked. BMW Assist was giving us great assistance.

  We’d downloaded the BMW app to our phones, plugged in the user name and password, and voilà—we were tracking the car. It was all I could do not to access the system, get the car on the line, and shock the hell out of whoever was in it by saying, “BMW, how can I assist you in selling cocaine?” That would have been good theater.

  Instead, I’d sent in Knuckles and Blood for some dismounted reconnaissance, with Decoy on a leash as backup in a sedan. I picked the recce team with a purpose, given what we had to work with. Jennifer was usually perfect for this kind of thing, because nobody expected a woman, but in this case, with the homogeneous nature of the barrio, she’d stand out.

  Knuckles had black hair that he always wore long, like a hippie. Blood was African-American, and while he wouldn’t exactly fade into the landscape, he had a better shot than Jennifer or me. With a two-day growth of beard and some ratty clothes, both looked like they belonged in Tepito. Which was fine for a recce, wandering around like they were looking to offload a shipment of bootleg CDs.

  What we would do once we found the target was another story entirely.

  44

  Blood came on the radio. “This market is very tight. Not a good place for an assault. It’s packed with people.”

  I looked at the map on my phone, getting a fix on both their positions in relation to the BMW’s blue marble. “Don’t start thinking assault just yet. Develop the situation. You still have a couple of blocks to go. Maybe it’ll thin out.”

  Jennifer gave me a look, chomping at the bit. Off the radio, I said, “Calm down. You don’t want your brother killed in a cross fire by a bunch of Mexican banditos who are reacting to our actions. Let’s get eyes on. Might be better to wait for the BMW to move. Get it in a more favorable l
ocation.”

  “But my brother may no longer be with it.”

  “Have some patience. We don’t know anything yet.”

  The radio came to life, with Blood giving me his opinion of my recce plan. “Who the hell thought I’d blend in here? I don’t think these people have ever seen a black man. Everybody I bump into looks like they want to kick my ass. And it’s really crowded, so I’m bumping into a lot.”

  “That’s just the neighborhood. Don’t aggravate anyone. Maybe buy some fake Nike basketball shoes. Make ’em all happy.”

  “I’m five-seven. I don’t play basketball, you stereotyping asshole.”

  “Then buy a sombrero. Just don’t get anyone mad. Break-break. Knuckles, what’s your status?”

  “About the same as Blood. Everyone eye-fucking me like they want to fight.”

  “From what I’m seeing, you’re closest. Looks like the marble is about a hundred meters south, down an alley to the east.”

  “Roger.”

  “Decoy, what’s your location?”

  “I’m staged on a north-south thoroughfare near the Tepito metro stop, but, Pike, I can’t do shit with the vehicle. There’s no way to get it through the market with any time to react.”

  “Roger all. Just hold tight. They’ll be coming to you if things go bad.”

  As soon as I said it, things began to go bad.

  “Pike, this is Knuckles. I tried to make the turn into the alley and I’ve been stopped. Three guys jabbering in Spanish at me. I can see the nose of the BMW inside a roll-up door about seventy meters away.”

  “Okay, back off. Let it go. Blood’s going to try from the other end.”

  I heard shouting in the background, then, “Crowd’s gathering. I’m about to be sacrificed to Santa Muerte. I don’t think they like me shopping here.”