by David Cole
“Joint task force,” Wong said. “U.S. provides surveillance, Mexico special ops people provide the ground assault.”
“Wait,” I said, “wait, are you saying, are you telling me that thing up there is sending a live video feed somewhere?”
“Yes.”
“Give me your cell phone,” I said to Kyle.
The Fujiyama batteries were so low I was saving them for one last session, so it was off. I punched in Don’s personal cell number and he answered immediately, shouting into the phone against a high-pitched engine whine in the background.
“Laura! Damn it, Laura, I’ve been trying to call you for an hour. I’ve got—”
“Never mind,” I interrupted. “Can you get Michelle Gilbert? Right away?”
“We’re in constant contact. What do you need?”
“Her access to JWICS. Find out if she can patch into…wait…” I turned to Gates. “What did you call that thing?”
“Predator. Listen, Laura—”
“We’re almost at Sierra el Aguaje,” I said. “Up above us, there’s this unmanned surveillance thing.”
“Global Hawk?”
“No. A Predator. You know what it does?”
“Live video of the ground. Approximately two-hundred-kilometer radius. Laura, that’s what I wanted to tell you. The U.S. Air Force has agreed to provide intel to the Mexican assault team, it’s a joint mission that—”
“I know that, I know that. Concentrate on the Predator. If it’s sending live video, get Gilbert to allow you access to the signal.”
His voice disappeared as the engine noise suddenly blossomed. I waited for ten seconds until the noise eased off.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“In a Cessna Skyhawk. When I heard about the joint operation, I figured there would be some kind of satellite-based intel coming in. I figured I’d get up high enough to track it if I knew what I was looking for.”
“You’re in a small airplane?”
“Yup. Used to fly these things.”
“You’re not flying it yourself?”
He laughed. I smiled. The humor of it steadied me, a man with no legs flying an airplane.
“Why aren’t you using Jo’s Learjet?”
“That’s the other thing I need to tell you. Jo pulled the money rug out from under us. Cancelled the deposit on that suite of rooms, told me to just go home with my toys. Said she had other ways of doing what had to be done.”
“Who? What?”
“No idea. She found another kidnap and rescue person, maybe. Don’t know. Emptied our money basket, filled up somebody else’s.”
“You’re out of a job,” I said to Kyle. He frowned, not understanding. “Jo Kanakaredes has found somebody else to rescue her cameraman.”
Kyle, Gates, and Wong eyed one another with only a moment’s hesitation.
“We made a contract,” Kyle said. “Money or not, we’re going to deliver it.”
“Don?” I said. “Where are you now?”
“Hovering at three thousand feet, circling just north of the border. The pilot says there’s too much risk from the Mexican government if we cross into their airspace. So…” I heard him punching numbers into another cell. “Stay on…I’m calling Gilbert. Back to you to in a minute.”
Gates had closed the tailgate and sat in front again. They were all waiting.
“Keep driving,” I said. “Just get us there.”
“Where is there?” Kyle asked.
“Don is going to try to access the live video from that thing up there. It’s obviously searching for the kidnappers’ place. You get us near the eastern slope of Sierra el Aguaje and by that time we might know exactly where to find the camp.”
We passed through the small village of El Aguaje de Robinson and headed roughly north for a mile until Kyle started shaking his head. He slowed and pulled off onto the desert floor and turned the car so we faced away from the low mountain ridge.
“We have to figure that somebody may be glassing us,” he said. “It’s a brand-new Range Rover. Nobody in this out-of-the-way place owns something like this. Plus, from a distance, and through a long lens, it’s got the profile of a Chevy Suburban. Lots of Mexican drug lords use them, even the Federales. Until we know exactly where the camp is located, we can’t go charging around like we’re touristas looking for a nice view.”
“Maybe that’s our answer,” Wong said, pointing at a pickup heading slowly toward us, the rear suspension totally bottomed out from the load of hay bales.
“Get him to stop,” Kyle said to me.
“Why should I do it?”
“Look at us. All rigged up with camo gear. Whoever is driving will figure we’re Federales and get nervous. You’re just a gringita, show him your legs, whatever, just get him to stop.”
“And then?”
The vehicle slowed as it came near us.
“El Camino,” Wong said with delight. “Nineteen fifty-nine. Oh man, it’s cherry, what I wouldn’t give to have that ride.”
“And that’s just what we’re going to do,” Kyle said. “We’ll offer a trade. If he’s got hay, he’s got a small rancho somewhere nearby. That could be our base.”
Drea Gonzalez slowed when I hailed her, but didn’t stop. Face creased and lined from decades in the sun, she was at least sixty years old, and showed neither fear nor welcome that a strange woman was waving her to stop. When she noticed three men in camo gear in the Range Rover, she ignored my smiles and palms-up welcome and tried to drive around me. Kyle quickly cut her off.
Wong quickly shrugged off his camo shirt, revealing a Grateful Dead tee-shirt. He walked slowly to the El Camino, hands empty and extended out to his sides, and talked with her in machine-gun Spanish for several minutes until she burst into a phlegmy spasm of laughter and got out of the El Camino, coughing from the laughter, gesturing derisively at the Range Rover.
“Did you offer to trade?” Kyle asked.
“That’s why she’s laughing.”
“What I need with that thing?” Drea said in English. “Fancy car, good for touristas, which I am thinking you are not. But useless, useless for hauling hay.”
“What would you like to have instead?” I asked.
She sized up the Range Rover, the three of us.
“Three-quarter-ton Chevy Silverado,” she replied shrewdly.
“Crew cab? Extended cab?”
“I live by myself,” she said dismissively. “Who’s going to ride in all that extra room? My goats…they shit too much, they ride in the back.”
“Okay,” Kyle said. “Deal.”
“Now you’re shitting on me,” she said.
“No. We’re serious.”
She walked up to the Range Rover, looked at Kyle and Gates, saw the M-16s in the back, the packs of supplies and ammunition, the rugged camping gear.
“I think you want something more of me,” she said finally.
“Yes.”
Kyle opened his door, sat with his legs dangling over the side of his seat, beckoning her to come around to his side of the Range Rover.
“Where’s your rancho,” he said.
“Three kilometers.”
“Laura. Get out a map, stand on that side of the car, where anybody might see you from the mountains. Point at the map, get the woman to point directly away from the mountains.”
“What you want, at my rancho?”
“We’re going to drive back into that village. Separately. We’ll meet you there and rig up your truck so the four of us can get underneath that hay with our equipment. You’re going to drive back to your rancho, we’re going to be there for a few hours.”
“It’s not for sale?”
“No no no, we only want to buy your truck. I figure, you getting a brand-new pickup, you’ll let us be your guests for a few hours. No longer, I promise.”
“Then you leave.”
“Yes.”
“And after you leave, you forget me? You forget the new truck, que no?”
&nb
sp; “You have to trust us.”
This sent her into another long spasm of laughter, and we all joined in.
“I think…okay, gringos, I think I will trust you. I sure don’t know why.”
Her casita was only two rooms, one of them a small bedroom with a shrine to the Virgin of Guadelupe. While Kyle and Wong unpacked all the gear, I’d drifted into the bedroom where Drea saw me eyeing the candles, the cross, her rosary of worn pink and green plastic beads.
“You are a believer?” she said. “I think…not.”
I smiled, nodded that she was right.
“We have a saying, even atheists are guadelupanos.”
“I believe mostly in myself.”
“Well. That’s something. At least all three of us are women.”
“Cate Blanchett,” Kyle said, laying both an M-16 and an AK-47.
“Quirky.”
Wong had dissembled his Sig Pro handgun, and was carefully cleaning the polymer frame.
“But sexy. Intelligent.”
“Yeah. But…this Jorja Fox.”
“Who?” Gates said from a window.
He’d wrapped the monocular in a dark shawl and was carefully glassing all he could see of the low-lying mountain range. I watched all three of them ready their gear so matter-of-factly they could have been passing a lazy Sunday afternoon. I’d called Don several times, but he just told me to hang up and wait. He’d reached Gilbert, but nothing had yet been arranged.
“From that crime scene TV show. CSI. Set in Vegas.”
“Never seen it.”
“This Jorja—”
“What kind of name is that?” Wong said as he re-seated the Sig’s stainless-steel slide. “I mean…these actresses, they make up these names to sound sexy.”
“Who cares if that’s her real name? She’s got this…I don’t know, some kind of speech impediment. She’s so cool, so bright, so…sexy.”
“How do you know she’s not just acting? The speech thing, I mean.”
“I’ll never meet her…in person. So I go with what I see on TV.”
“Nothing,” Gates said, standing away from the window. “Not one thing except a lot of rock and some cactus.”
The cell phone rang abruptly.
“Heads up,” Don said. “I’m almost patched into the live feed from the Predator. You people good to go?”
Don said nothing for several minutes, then told me to download an image.
I’d already cabled the Fujiyama and my laptop together. Waiting. The Fujiyama’s answering chimes went off and I immediately made the connection. A large file slowly downloaded. I watched it, anxious.
“Easy,” Kyle said, a hand on my shoulder. “It’s happening, just let it.”
“Get that?” Don asked when the download was complete.
We studied an image shot directly above Sierra el Aguaje. A small cluster of buildings was tucked into a rocky nook, the mountain walls rising on three sides. I could make out five different buildings, three much smaller than the others.
“It’s too tight an image,” Wong said, his topo maps spread alongside the laptop. “Find out if there’s anything with a wider scope. We need to fix some identifiers, we need to know exactly where this place is among all that rock.”
Don had already anticipated this and the Fujiyama chimed again.
The second image showed an area approximately a mile wide. Wong took out a magnifying glass, moved quickly from the laptop image to his topo maps.
“Think I got it! Laura, can you…um, whatever you call it, enlarge this area here, at the bottom of this image?”
I imported it into PhotoShop, cropped the picture, and set it to display full screen. Using the handle of the magnifying glass, Wong traced a line of rocks on the image, and with the index finger of his other hand pointed to a spot on the topo map.
“Here.”
“You need anything more?” Don said.
“No. I’m disconnecting. The battery level is so low, I want to save it.”
Gates drew his finger along a ridgeline on the topo map and Kyle nodded.
“That’s our entry,” he said.
At the window again with the monocular, Wong shook his head.
“Out of sight.”
“From the camp, yes. But they probably have spotters up on the ridgeline.”
“Maybe,” Wong said. “But I’d say not, I’d say…we’re good to go from right here. Right now.”
Gates had already checked the communications backpack and was cinching it tight when Kyle stopped him. Reaching inside, Kyle took out a headset and portable communications pack and handed them to me.
“Motel?” Wong said.
“Why not? I’m one, you’re two, Gates is three, Laura is four.”
“Motel?” I said, adjusting the headset band so the mike stalk was at my mouth.
“Motel one,” Kyle said, his voice echoing in my left ear.
“Motel two,” Wong said.
“Motel three.” Gates. They all waited for me.
“Motel four?” I said.
“Good to go,” Kyle said. “It’s one of our little jokes. A Russell Crowe thing.”
“No. David Caruso, man,” Wong protested.
“In Proof of Life, when they do their commando raid on the rebels camp, they’re all motels, that’s how they identify who’s talking without using names.”
Kyle unpacked a shortwave receiver with a battery pack and set it on the pine tabletop. He held up a laminated card and put it beside the receiver.
“I’m going with you?” I said, anxious.
“You stay here. This is our ops center. We need your ears. This is both a shortwave receiver and a scanner. This card has a list of frequencies that the Federales will probably use once they start their assault. Our own headsets go in your left ear, this thing in your right. You’ve got to listen for them, you’ve got to warn us if they get nearby. Once those guys chopper in an assault team, they’re not going to make too much effort to identify us.”
“But I can’t see anything.”
“She’s right,” Gates said, his finger on the topo map. “I’d say, get her to this point. She should have line of sight along the entire slope.”
“Take the El Camino,” Kyle said. “Drive slow, like you’re looking for mesquite wood or saguaro ribs. Stop every hundred yards and pick up something, pick up any piece of wood you see, throw it in the back of the truck, keep driving.”
“Take the monocular,” Wong said. “I figure when you get about two clicks from here you’ll have direct line of sight to the camp. Just be careful you don’t keep the lens on it for too long. Somebody will be watching you.”
“I don’t care about anybody watching,” I said nervously. “What if somebody actually comes down to say hello?”
“You see anybody coming, you drive away.”
“You cool?”
“Oh now, you know I’m cool. I’m also scared shitless.”
Kyle waited until all of us had our headsets on and we did a few checks.
“We’re good to go,” Gates said.
“Do I drive you part of the way?” I asked.
“You drive alone. We’re pretty much going to run for a mile or so.”
“Should I radio you when I get there?”
“No. We talk. You just listen. We’ll come at the camp from the western slope. It should take us forty-five minutes to get there, less if the slope isn’t a mess. Just keep your ears on, so you’ll know what we’re doing. You ready for this?”
“No,” I said.
“She’s good,” Wong said, grinning. “Give her the hat.”
Kyle dug into the bottom of one of the packsacks they were leaving behind.
“No camo hat for you,” he said. “Wear this.”
FDNY on the front, in red letters outlined in white. Turning it around to adjust the sizing strap, I read Stay Back Two Hundred Yards.
“New York Fire Department. Our good-luck hat. Anything else?”
“Just don’t say that macho thing to me. ‘Good to go.’”
“She’s soooo good.” Wong grinned again.
I grabbed the keys to the El Camino.
“I’m gone.”
Half an hour later, I drove carefully down and across a dry arroyo and stopped, after carefully pointing the hood of the El Camino away from the mountains. I gathered up several saguaro limbs, stood for a few moments, took off the FDNY cap, and wiped my forehead. I leaned against the pickup bed, looking everywhere but at the mountain, trying to avoid looking at the mountain.
I took the water jug from the passenger side of the front seat. I drank. I sat on the edge of the seat with the door open. I closed the door, nonchalantly, leaned my head against the back for a moment, slid over to the center of the seat, and holding the monocular I slid down until I could point it up the mountainside.
Buildings.
Shacks, poorly built shacks. Galvanized tin sheeting for roofs.
No people.
I went over all frequencies on the scanner. No voices. I fiddled with the volume and squelch controls of the headset, wanting to hear Kyle’s voice, wanting to hear anything.
“Motel two.”
Wong’s steady voice crackled in the headset as though he’d read my mind.
“Report.”
“Two of them.”
“Motel three, you see them?”
“See them, see no weapons.”
“Lazy.”
“Motel one, you see them yet?”
“Yeah.”
“Shack one. Nearest the top. I see…somebody’s moving inside. Unbelievable, they don’t even lock the doors, they don’t carry their weapons.”
“Whoa! Number three. He’s carrying an AK-47. He’s chewing some ass, he’s got the other two…Jesus Christ, he’s pointing at Laura.”
“Steady, motel two,” Kyle said. “Okay, I see them. Motel four?”
“Motel four,” I said, my lips so dry the bottom lip cracked as I spoke.
“Motel four. You’re going to think you might have company.”
I licked the split lip, I chewed on it and tasted blood.
“Should I…how much time?”
“Motel three, are you in position to take that man downslope?”
“Be in position in five minutes.”
“Motel two. Once that guy is fifty yards away, we go.”
