by David Graham
First published in 2013 by
Andromeda Publishing
Dublin, Ireland
All rights © 2013 David Graham
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ISBN: 978 1 909483 42 2
ISBN: 978 1 909483 43 9
ISBN: 978 1 909483 44 6
ISBN: 978 1 909483 45 3
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contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Author Biography
Acknowledgements
prologue
Eighty.
That was how many paces it took to patrol each side of the building. Two years of sentry duty meant he had walked the circuit thousands of times. There was a lot of time to think while working and, given his nature, that usually meant worrying about one thing or another. But even when his mind was otherwise occupied, he still subconsciously counted off the steps. He went over his checklist of current troubles. Maria had been unwell lately but she refused to visit the doctor, saying it was a waste of money. His eldest boy had been staying out later and later and he suspected his son was falling into bad company. More mundanely, as was usually the case, he was struggling financially. The younger children badly needed some new clothes and, once again, there was a problem with the starter motor on his truck.
Seventy-eight, seventy-nine, eighty. Turn the corner.
Roberto appreciated what he had. From his early days, scrabbling to make a living in the nearby Mexican border town of Conchillo, to the last couple of years working for El Cártel de Zaragosa, there had been many reminders of how hard life could be. Some of the things he had seen were better forgotten. Sentry duty might be tedious but it provided for him and his family. His wife did not like him working for the cartel. She had reluctantly agreed only after he had pledged to limit his participation to guarding the compound outside town. The truth, however, was that all of them had to sometimes participate in the punishment of those who crossed the cartel. He hated the deception but who could afford to pass up the chance of a steady wage?
Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen.
Patrol was the worst part of the nightshift. At least if you were inside, you had company and even the chance to catch up on some sleep. Outside, you spent most of the time alone, pacing your circuit. He didn’t enjoy the violence; he never strutted around as some of the younger men did, infused with the sense of power that came with their brutality. Where he did find common ground with them was on the pointlessness of this monotonous work. Two pairs of men were assigned to each four-hour shift. One patrolled the perimeter fence while the other took care of the building. The extent of the security didn’t take into account the absence of any threat to the cartel; the dual strategy of intimidation and corruption had worked. Night after night, all this wasted effort.
Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.
Of course, the amount of effort expended could be disputed. While Roberto’s cautious outlook never allowed him to shirk work, others were less conscientious. Saul was on duty with him tonight. The traits that made him such a good drinking partner were not suited to the repetitive task at hand. He always tried to get by with the minimal amount of effort and, had it not been for an influential relative within the cartel, he wouldn’t have lasted long. Saul felt his mission was to get drunk and to get laid as often as possible. Life’s too short for worry, he said. Despite their basic differences, Roberto enjoyed his carefree co-worker’s company.
Fifty-four, fifty-five, fifty-six.
Maybe he could get Goyo to come over tomorrow morning. His neighbour had worked as a mechanic briefly and might be able to resurrect the vehicle. As for Juan, he would sit down with the boy, talk to him as an equal and convince him that these friends were not the kind he should have. Maria, though, would be more difficult; her stubbornness was renowned but he would win her over.
Seventy-five, seventy-six, seventy-seven.
Roberto was almost at the corner when a patch of darkness detached from its surroundings and moved languidly towards him. “So how many beers did you have tonight?” he asked, laughing.
It happened slowly, like a dream where you are unable to wake up. He felt his head being pulled forward and could not muster the strength to resist. What was Saul doing? This kind of horseplay wasn’t funny, the grip at the back of his neck hurt. A dull impact hit him just above the chest and he felt himself being dragged down as if by a heavy current. His legs buckled, and the figure followed him to the ground. He felt the hot breath on his face and caught the smell of mint. The strong grip slowed his descent, breaking his fall, for which he felt strangely grateful. He tried to speak but there was no sound except a soft rasping. That wasn’t him, was it? The hand on his neck tightened, then he heard something being torn.
Larsen had watched the compound for three days. The men were eager to get on with it but he wouldn’t be rushed. When they had arrived they already had a detailed plan of attack based on meticulously researched intelligence. They had drilled repeatedly at another location, preparing for the mission and gelling as a team. Despite this, he had insisted on waiting until he was totally satisfied that all of their objectives could be met. His involvement with this mission had started months earlier and he wasn’t about to waste all that time because of some small oversight. Years of experience had taught him the value of patience.
Just before dusk on the fourth day, he saw the final component slot into place. Lowering his binoculars, he closed his eyes briefly and reminded himself of what he had learned about the green, yellow and red.
He signalled the men over and gave the order to go.
Two of the men moved down the hill, approaching the compound on opposite sides as closely as cover allowed. The last team member remained with Larsen, who was watching the sentries, waiting for them to hit their mark before giving the signal to fire. The snipers were equipped with M24 SWS Remingtons, which had mounted on them Litton Aquila X6 night-vision devices. The sentries, just inside the perimeter fence, were less than a hundred metres away, comfortably w
ithin the snipers’ range. The subsonic ammunition ensured neither of the sentries closer to the building were alerted.
Once he had confirmed the kills, Larsen and the other man each moved to join the snipers and both pairs of men advanced towards the fence. Notwithstanding the limited range of the video surveillance cameras mounted on the building, there were other dangers. Occasionally, the guards assigned to building patrol would break with procedure and head out to the fence to talk with their co-workers. This random sloppiness unwittingly increased the difficulty of the attack. Powerful bolt cutters made short work of the fence and within seconds they had covered the open ground to the building. Larsen’s companion watched as he dispatched the more dutiful guard on their side of the building while the other pair took care of his counterpart.
The remoteness of the location meant there were no fixed telephone lines to worry about, and activating the mobile jammer completely cut the building off from the outside world. Rather than use the traditional strip explosives on the two reinforced doors, they employed Simon Grenade Rifles. The doors were literally blasted from their hinges, becoming dangerous missiles as they flew inwards. The impact when they came to rest added to the panic and confusion of those inside. Two of the attackers headed straight for the video surveillance room. The only guard there, who had been slumped in front of the monitors, was wrenched from his slumber by the deafening explosions. Before he could gather his thoughts, a burst from a Micro Uzi 9 mm ripped through him.
Down the other end of the building, the remaining guards’ state of readiness was no better. With the exception of one man at the sink, everyone had been lounging on easy-chairs drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes or playing cards when the explosions erupted. Their powerful assault rifles lay beyond reach and only the standing guard managed to get a shot off before they were cut down. When Larsen had confirmed his partner had not been hit they proceeded to the main refinery. The others were waiting there, standing over the bodies of the three workers responsible for purifying the morphine base.
“Surprises?” asked Larsen.
They shook their head and he instructed them to take up their positions.
They left the room without so much as a second glance at its incredibly valuable contents. From raw gum through all its intermediate stages up to the final white powder, there was enough of the drug here to ensure several lifetimes of riches. Larsen removed his backpack and placed the explosives throughout the room.
Thirty minutes later, they were back at their base camp, loading their gear into the two waiting 4x4s. They had changed from their dark fatigues into T-shirts, jeans and trainers. None of them looked particularly remarkable. Larsen’s Mediterranean skin tone had darkened after a few weeks’ exposure to the sun and that, combined with his lean frame, meant he would be able to blend easily while he was in the country. Opening the door of one of the jeeps, he paused.
The rumble of the explosion from the distant compound washed over the hills. The other three turned back to look, able to make out the faint glow of fire, visible over the ridge of hills. When they managed to drag their gaze from the afterglow of the explosion Larsen was behind the wheel, the engine running.
“Good work. Follow the extraction route as planned. The contact channel will be operational for twenty-four hours, but only use it if absolutely necessary. The balance of your payment has just been lodged.”
With that, he closed the door and swung the jeep out toward the highway.
one
She walked through the compound, not quite believing the scale of the devastation. Behind the tall red-haired woman, Campas was wrapping up the formalities of ejecting the local police, who were plainly out of their depth, from the bombsite. It had been more than twelve hours since the incident had been reported and yet some isolated clumps of wreckage continued to smoulder. The wind occasionally swirled and changed direction, causing the investigators to splutter as the thick black fumes assailed them.
Diane Mesi looked out beyond the perimeter fence at the arid landscape, still slightly bemused to find herself at the remote location. She had just about finished the second of her visits when news of the attack had crossed Campas’s desk. When he had filled her in and invited her to accompany his team to the refinery, she had jumped at the chance. It was not the first time Campas’s generosity had surprised her in the short time they had known each other. Her expectation had been that she would receive little cooperation or genuine sharing of information in Mexico but nothing could have been further from the truth. If things worked out, they could be working together on a regular basis, so this was a good sign.
Mesi had been appointed as head of a newly formed Drug Enforcement Agency department only seven weeks earlier. Christened the Trend and Alliance Intelligence Taskforce, or TAIT for short, their remit was to collate and process intelligence from a wide range of sources with a view to identifying possible current and future strategic initiatives by the major cartels. When news of the intention to form the taskforce had first been circulated throughout the administration it had been widely welcomed. The general feeling up to that point had been that the DEA had become too reactionary in its operations. New approaches were needed. This taskforce was seen as a first step in that process. The provisional budget was relatively modest but her seniors in the Agency stressed that they had to start somewhere. Mesi had been one of a large number of candidates who had applied for a variety of senior positions on the taskforce. She had been stunned when at the end of the second round of interviews she had been offered the team lead. Of course, some resentment had resulted when her appointment was announced. She had beaten a number of more senior candidates, something they found hard to accept given her lack of field experience.
Most of the seven years she had been with the DEA had been spent on financial analysis and predictive modelling, areas in which she excelled. She felt some of the criticism regarding fieldwork had been a bit unfair. She had joined the DEA after two unfulfilling years as an analyst with an investment bank following completion of her economics Ph.D. On completion of standard basic training, she had regularly requested assignments to active investigations but she had been turned down most of the time. Best to be assigned where you can do the most good was how it was put.
She was still waiting to be told when the remaining positions on the team would be filled and when office space was going to be allocated for the new team. Arthur Marshall, the DEA director, had advised her that there were only one or two remaining glitches in finalising the funding and that these should be addressed any day now. In the meantime she had more than enough to occupy herself. Her first task had been to draw up a schedule for visiting the various other agencies, foreign and domestic, that she envisaged TAIT would be working with most closely. Mexico’s Fuerza Antidrogas del Ministerio del Interior had been one of these. Her visit should only have been for three days but it had proven so productive, primarily due to Salvador Campas’s accessibility, that she had extended it and then returned for another seven-day stay.
The two short visits had been invaluable. Not only because of what she had learnt concerning the Mexican and Central American drug scene but also because she heard about the obstacles the Mexican team had to overcome to get this far. In a way she learnt more from their mistakes than their many noteworthy successes.
She only hoped she could replicate Campas’s achievements in her position. A twenty-year veteran of drug enforcement, he had been commissioned by Mexico’s minister of the interior to set up their taskforce three years earlier. The move had been seen as an appeasement to the US State Department, which maintained that Mexico was not contributing sufficiently to the War on Drugs. They had specifically questioned the integrity of the previous minister, accusing him of collaborating with the cartels. These allegations had never been substantiated following the politician’s assassination in a car bomb explosion, but a shadow had been cast. His successor had been determined not to leave himself open to similar accusations and he
provided the impetus for the new taskforce. It had taken Campas months to recruit his team and build up their own secure network. He had thrown up a veil of secrecy around them, sharing nothing with outsiders. Campas had confided to her how, after almost a year with no arrests, the minister had come close to disbanding the taskforce.
From then the team’s impact had been dramatic. They had moved quickly to secure evidence and testimony on a scale previously thought impossible. Within a year of their first prosecutions, two of the largest heroin rings operating near the US border had been smashed and the ringleaders handed multiple life sentences. After this everyone, even the various US agencies with whom they liaised, realised the new force were the genuine article.
But it had not all been good news. Campas quickly became a marked man. He was now under twenty-four-hour protection. What probably rankled more was the fact that he and his team had become effectively exiled from all other branches of Mexican law-enforcement. Rather than taking pride in the arrests, the rank and file saw them as glory-hunting elitists.
If TAIT achieved its goals, it would not only provide invaluable assistance to their colleagues within the DEA but also enable foreign agencies like Campas’s to achieve even greater degrees of success. Despite the months of anticipated backbreaking logistical and administrative work which lay ahead, Mesi could not wait to get started. With luck, she thought, looking around the wreckage, this would be a first step.
The Gulfstream V-SP taxied to a complete stop. Viewed from the terminals normally allotted for private charters, the plane looked like nothing more than another arrival on a routinely busy day.
The William M. Bridgeshaw Airport on the Caribbean island of Saint Kitts and Nevis was no stranger to flights like this and it facilitated their need for privacy. There was a bustle of activity as the door of the plane lowered to the tarmac. Four heavily built men armed with sub-machine guns moved quickly down the stairs, not encumbered in the slightest by the heavy flak jackets they wore. Two of the men took up positions twenty metres from the plane, scanning 360 degrees for anything out of the ordinary. The other two stood close to the foot of the stairs.
