“What’s in a name, Breed? Live with it.” Stein gets to her feet. “Come on.”
I catch Tara’s eye. “I’ll stay here, thank you. Tara’s nicer company.”
“Breed, are you going to make a career busting my balls?”
“Stein, I love to hear them clank.”
“Fine. Harris will keep an eye on you from the dining room.”
Stein turns her back on me, crosses the foyer. She’s changed from flat dress shoes to dressy ankle boots. The heels add an inch and a half to her height.
Harris and his team move their laptops to a table from which they can see me. Through the window, I watch Stein climb into her Civic. Reflexively, I scan the 7-Eleven and the gas station for suspicious vehicles.
Nothing.
Stein pulls onto main street and heads for the highway.
I sip my beer.
Stein’s detective work was impressive. She has everything she needs to crack the case wide open. The problem is, most of the pieces are overseas. Comida Del Sol, the IRGC shell companies. She can shut down the Bledsoe operation, but the cartels and the Quds are a hydra. I’m sure Papi is not Iran’s only partner. The IRGC and Quds have certainly formed joint ventures with other cartels. The Tijuana sector. The Gulf of Mexico.
How long will Stein be in court? An hour maybe. She’ll be back by fifteen hundred.
“Who are all the people with guns, Mr Breed?” Tara asks. “They look so... square.”
I stifle a laugh. “They’re FBI types—But not.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means they’re play acting.”
“Pretending to be FBI?”
“Yep.”
“You’re helping them?”
“You could say the lady and I are helping each other.”
“It looks that way. Those men don’t like either of you.”
“They don’t?”
“I heard them talking.” Tara hangs a wineglass on an inverted rack. Begins polishing another. “Nobody ever thinks I hear anything.”
“Tara, I would never underestimate you.”
“You’re too nice, Mr Breed.”
“They don’t like her because she’s their boss.” I sip my beer. “A lot of people hate their boss.”
“Why don’t they like you?”
I never thought I would say it. “I guess it’s because I get on with their boss.”
“Well, that makes sense.” Tara glances at Harris. “That one man never smiles, always looks like he’s pissed off.”
Harris returns her glance with a sneer.
“I have some business to take care of, Tara. I have to go out, but I need to go without those men seeing me. Can I get out the back way?”
Tara stops polishing the glass. Looks at me, a wicked smile on her face. “See those two doors at the back of the lounge? The one on the left goes to the bathroom, the other to the kitchen. You can get out the kitchen.”
I glance at Harris. He has turned back to his laptop. His team are pounding away. The table at which they sit is far removed from the front window. It’s perfect.
“I’m going to go to the bathroom for a minute. Okay, Tara?”
Tara winks at me. “I’ll be here when you get back, Mr Breed.”
I get up and stride quickly to the kitchen door. Turn the knob, pull it open. I’m through in a flash.
Empty. Noon, but no one’s ordered lunch. The back door is shut, fastened with an old-fashioned barrel bolt and hasp. I slide the bolt free, open the door, and step out into the furnace of a West Texas high noon.
I’m facing the back lane. I look up, see Mirasol’s window. Dodge around the side of the building and find myself at the end of the parking lot. Go straight to Keller’s truck, start it up, and peel out of the lot.
I race down main street toward the highway.
Check the rearview mirror. Harris, Collins, and Wilson are piling into a four-door Caprice. One of the models that replaced the venerable Crown Vic as the standard police workhorse. The Caprice has whip antennae mounted between the rear window and the trunk hinge. I smile to myself. By the time I pass the Dusty Burger, the Caprice is tailgating me.
Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.
No shit. Collins at the wheel, the Caprice’s image fills the mirror. Every line of Harris’s face is visible in sharp relief. Any closer and we’ll have to get married.
I slow down, turn onto the highway. Collins tries to pass me, and I accelerate to sixty miles an hour. I’m flying, but this is hardly a high-speed chase. Texas 20 is not built for the Indy 500. I want to take care of Keller’s truck.
The Caprice pulls up next to me. Harris yells, but I can’t hear him. Not through two side windows. He gestures at me to pull over. I ignore him.
Collins drops back, gets himself into position. He’s going to ram the left corner of my rear bumper, push the truck into a spin. A standard police interception technique. When he makes his move, I speed up, overtake three cars, and settle back into the right lane.
The Caprice races up the left lane, tries to pass me. They’re going to cut me off. I speed up to seventy-five miles an hour. Fly past the Skeet & Trap Club. The arid fields and grassland of Salem County are behind us, we’re in Socorro, approaching the built-up areas of El Paso. On our left, the Franklin Canal. On either side, broad subdivisions, strip malls, community centers.
The highway sweeps north by west in a broad arc. I slow to forty miles an hour. The Caprice slows with me. For the moment, Harris and Collins are content to see what I’m going to do.
I slow further. Drop to thirty, then twenty. Pull off the highway into an industrial park. A long, low building two football fields long. Smaller buildings, densely packed, with narrow spaces between. Arranged perpendicular to the long building. The spaces look like alleys. I turn left into one of them, drive until I can go no further.
It’s a dead end.
I stop the truck, look in the rearview mirror, and wait for the Caprice to catch me. Collins parks ten yards back. The three men get out.
“Come on, Breed.” No triumph in Harris’s voice. He’s tired and pissed. “What the fuck are you trying to pull. Get out of that truck.”
I open the pickup’s door and step into the heat. Turn to face Harris and his team. Three clones in a row. Collins and Wilson look nervous. They’re not used to being pricks.
“You’re coming back,” Harris snaps. “Right the fuck now.”
“I don’t think so, Harris.”
“What do you mean, you don’t think so? Get in this car. Wilson will drive the truck back.”
“He means,” a voice calls out, “he’s not going with you. You are coming with us.”
It’s Hancock, standing on the roof of the building to my right. He is covering the clones with an M4. Lenson stands on the roof of the building across the street, similarly armed.
The men look bewildered.
“Harris.” I step to the rear of the truck. “You are on the X. Covered from an elevated position. Lie face down, hands behind your head. Right now.”
“You son of a bitch.”
“Just do it.”
The clones get on the ground, clasp their hands behind their heads.
Lenson tosses a package to me. It sails through the air and lands on the asphalt at my feet. I pick it up, tear it open. A knife, zip ties and duct tape. I step to Harris, bind his hands behind his back, bind his ankles, and slap gray tape over his mouth. I do the same for Collins and Wilson.
One at a time, I search them for guns. Each has a SIG P226. Harris carries a Smith & Wesson Bodyguard in an ankle holster. It’s a nice personal protection revolver. Five shots, .38 Special, a shrouded hammer that won’t catch on clothing. I stick the Bodyguard in my hip pocket and throw the SIGs into the pickup.
“Hot damn.” Hancock steps from a doorway. He’s come down from his perch, the M4 slung over his shoulder. “Hog-tied like steer.”
I collect phones from Harris a
nd his team. Pull the SIM cards.
“Let’s go,” I say.
Lenson puts up his rifle, turns away from the edge of the rooftop.
I take cloth hoods from Hancock and bag Harris’s head. He makes muffled noises as I cinch the drawstring under his chin. I turn and hood Collins and Wilson.
Together, Lenson and I sling the men over our shoulders and throw them onto the bed of Keller’s truck. We take a heavy canvas tarp and spread it over them. “We’re saving their lives,” I say.
“How do you figure that?” Lenson asks.
“Stein was going to send them up against Hamza.”
“Huh.” Lenson grunts. “We’re saving their lives.”
Hancock gets into the Caprice. Lenson and I get into Keller’s truck.
“Where are you parked,” I ask.
“Just around the corner.”
Hancock and I back up the length of the alley, pull into the street. Lenson points to his SUV parked at the end of the long building. I drive him over to it and he gets in. Together, the three of us make a little convoy.
We make our way to Lenson’s store. He’s renting more space than he needs. Not sure what rents are like in Socorro, but he could certainly save by moving someplace smaller. The back of the warehouse doubles as a garage. We park the three vehicles inside.
Lenson switches on the lights and lowers the roller doors.
I get out and drop the tailgate. Together, we drag Harris and his team out of the truck and dump them on the floor of the garage. They’re struggling. Jerking against the ties.
“Be still.” I kick Harris. Not hard.
It’s not quite thirteen hundred.
Stein is going to court.
43
Socorro, 1400 Hrs Thursday
Lenson’s garage makes a great workshop. There is so much space it feels like an airplane hangar. Our voices and the sounds we make as we work echo from the walls. The smell of grease and gun oil is familiar and comforting.
After I called Lenson, we took the SIM cards from our phones. I deactivated Harris’s at the industrial park. Should Stein trace us, she will find nothing.
We go into the store’s front room, where Harris cannot hear. I marvel at the arsenal Lenson has on display. He has set out the weapons we will take to Mexico. For himself and Hancock, two M4 carbines, two 12-gauge Benelli automatic shotguns, and two Glock 21 .45 caliber pistols. I will take Keller’s Winchester 1897 12-gauge and the Glock nine millimeter. Lenson and Hancock will each pack a Bowie knife.
Lenson has piled ammunition on the counter. Sixteen thirty-round magazines for the M4s and boxes of two-and-three-quarter-inch, 12-pellet shotgun shells. Double-ought buck. Four magazines for each of our pistols.
I vetoed the fragmentation grenades.
“There will be civilians on the second floor,” I say. “Girls the cartels are trafficking.”
Lenson closes his fist around one of the grenades. “That makes the floor harder to clear.”
No way will we frag kids. “Then it’s harder.”
Careful not to damage the molding, we unscrew the front interior door panels on the SUV. Wrap the magazines and shotgun shells in plastic bags and pack them in. When we are finished, we replace the panels and screw them tight.
The pistols and knives take less room. We remove the interior panel on the left side of the passenger compartment and conceal the weapons in the dead space.
The rifles and shotguns are the most difficult to conceal.
We break them down separately and package them in large plastic garbage bags. Bind them tightly with duct tape.
Lenson throws two wooden creeper trolleys on the floor of the garage. Together, we lie flat and slide under the SUV. The long sills between the wheel wells are perfect for concealment. We tape the packages securely. Slap black grease over the plastic bags.
I doubt the border guards will check under the vehicle. If they do, the camouflage will pass a cursory inspection.
We store flashlights, screwdrivers, and mat knives in Lenson’s toolbox. Everything we need to reassemble the arsenal on the other side. Canvas haversacks to carry magazines and ammunition look innocent when empty. We fold and lay them under the toolbox.
The process takes over an hour. We go back into the store. In the bathroom, we clean the grease from our hands.
Lenson takes two six-packs from his fridge. We sit behind his laptop and use Magellan Voyager to review the geography of Juarez. We familiarize ourselves with each of the bridges, the major landmarks, and the roads to and from La Cueva.
When we reach the La Cueva neighborhood, Lenson flies down and surveys the street in front of the club. Turns to the river and scans the back.
“The image is digitally rendered,” I tell him. “It is not accurate.”
We switch to the link I sent him. The photographs Mirasol showed me. The front of the club. “There are two sentries at the front,” I say. “One on each corner. Here—and here.”
From the counter, I snatch a pen and pad of paper. Sketch the club, the street in front, the lane at the back. Side streets connecting the two. I place an X on each front corner of the building, facing the street.
I draw an X next to the back lane. “There is one sentry watching the fire stairs.”
“No pictures of the lane?” Hancock asks.
“No. The lane will be the most difficult part of the infil. It’s dark, the sentry was inexperienced. There is a ditch—here.”
A thick line between the lane and the river represents the ditch.
“We will approach as close as we can under cover of darkness,” I tell them. “I will cover the remaining ground by crawling in the ditch. When I reach the club, I will neutralize the sentry.”
“If there’s more than one?”
“We improvise.”
I take another sheet of paper and draw a rectangle. I sketch the street in front, the back lane, the fire stairs. “This is the second floor plan.”
A corridor. Rooms on either side. The fire door at one end, stairs leading to the ground floor on the other.
“That,” Lenson says, “is a bitch.”
Corridors are killing fields. For both sides. Anyone sticking his head into a corridor is likely to have it blown off. Anyone standing in a corridor has nowhere to run.
“No way around it.” I draw rooms on either side of the corridor. “I saw Quds in these two rooms at the end closest the fire stairs. This—is a fuck room. Center-fed.”
“The others?”
“There is another fuck room by the fire escape. Smaller, probably corner-fed. One of these others holds the girls. Not sure which one. The rest could be Quds and cartel quarters, armories. We have to see when we get there.”
We have spent thousands of hours in shoot houses, training for hostage rescue and close quarters combat. I estimate six Quds and as many soldados occupy the second floor. A challenging exercise.
I raise my eyes to Lenson’s. “You and I will clear the rooms.”
“Roger that.”
Together, we turn to Hancock. “You have to dominate the corridor,” I tell him. “As we clear the rooms, we will leapfrog each other.”
“At least another six cartel downstairs,” Hancock observes.
“If anyone comes up the stairs, kill them.”
Once the shooting starts, the battle will turn fluid. Some will race into the corridor, others will be more cautious. There is no way to determine ahead of time how individuals will react.
“We will proceed surreptitiously for as long as we can.” I trace our path with the point of my pen. “Once shots are fired, we have to roll.”
Two operators are required to clear a center-fed room. Fine when you go in with overwhelming force. In La Cueva, we will be outnumbered.
I have only seen the interior of one room. The others are question marks. Once the shooting starts, we will have to clear the second floor as quickly as possible.
Lenson’s tone is grim. “Each of us takes a room.�
��
“And Hancock covers the hall.”
There is no other way.
“All right,” Lenson says. “We’ve cleared the top floor.”
I take a third sheet of paper. Sketch the floor plan of the ground floor, including the staircase. “Civilians will scatter. That leaves at least six soldados with rifles on the ground floor. Quds. They will zero in on the staircase.”
“We dominate with volume of fire.”
“Give them gas,” I tell them. “Be proactive, force them into reactive mode.”
“Attack down the stairs,” Lenson agrees. “Kill them all.”
“Wish we had armor,” I say.
Hancock looks up, a strange light in his eyes.
“Nobody lives forever.”
44
Socorro, 1700 Hrs Thursday
I stand over Harris.
Stare at his bound, hooded body.
Prod him with the toe of my boot. “Hey.”
Harris’s head turns in my direction.
Wilson, Collins, and Harris. Three bundles, all in a row. Lying on the concrete floor. Soaking up the smell of axle grease. Damn, those Brooks Brothers suits will never be the same.
I grab Harris’s ankle ties with one hand and drag him. Between the garage and the front room, there is a three-inch sill in the doorway. Harris’s head bumps over the sill and he grunts. I should have dragged him by his necktie.
Lenson and Hancock watch me take Harris to Lenson’s office behind the counter. I sit the agent up in a straight-backed chair and close the door. Reach behind him, lift his wallet.
A Texas driver’s license and credit cards. No other identification.
There’s another chair in front of Lenson’s desk. I set it in front of the bound man. Sweep the room visually for anything that could identify our location, the owner of the premises.
Satisfied, I sit down in front of Harris and take off his hood. Set his wallet on the desk.
Behind the duct tape, Harris’s face is contorted with rage.
“Calm down,” I tell him. “We got time to kill.”
Harris screams into the gag.
Danger Close (A Breed Thriller Book 1) Page 21
