Always had. They hurt. Badly.
And now it was worse than ever.
Pain radiated from his kneecaps to his ankles and up his thighs as he struggled to balance on the floor of the panel van. His hands had swelled from the duct tape that tightly bound his wrists. The tape encircling his head tore the skin near his eyes and ripped out his thin hair.
Bent forward, his back and neck ached. Blood dripped from his throbbing nose and split, puffy lips. His heart pounded in his ears as he drew a breath. He had thought he was being kidnapped and would be held for ransom. They did that. But now he realized. These bastards are going to kill me!
“You got this all wrong,” Sam said in a wavering voice. “Listen to me. I didn’t tell them anything, I swear.”
He fell silent, waiting for a response. Nothing. Only the whine of the truck tires.
“Killing me will make problems for you,” he said.
He listened for a response as the truck tore along the desert highway. Nothing.
Sam tried again. “People will find me. And when they do, they’ll come after you.” He paused. “It’s not a threat. It’s a fact.” He took a breath, licked his lips, and tasted his own warm blood. He coughed, then caught his breath.
Sam felt the truck slow, then swerve off the pavement and bounce onto rutted dirt. Brush scraped the sides of the van. The truck slid to a stop. Sam cried out in pain as his shoulder hit the metal floor. So now it comes. This is how I die. Like a dog in the desert. The engine died, pinging in the silence. The front doors creaked open, then slammed shut as footsteps pounded to the back of the truck. The panel doors banged open. Sam felt the rush of cool night air.
Terrified, he curled into the fetal position, unable to stop his body from shaking.
“No! No!” Sam cried. Two men lifted him by the arms and tossed him out. His face mashed into the dirt, his shoulder crackled with pain. He groaned, gulping in air. Sensing that death was imminent, he began to pray aloud. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures...”
He was hoisted again and set on his knees. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...” Sam heard only the heavy breathing of his captors. “I will fear no ev—”
The sharp crack of a gunshot pierced the stillness, and everything went black.
Chapter 1
Washington, D.C.
Kyle Dawson staked out a position in the Dirksen Senate Office Building corridor, just outside the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee room. He took a deep breath, hitched up his jeans, and straightened his rumpled corduroy jacket. He raked his fingers through his gray-flecked hair. He hated this. Ambush journalism. But he had no choice.
In moments his target, Senator Micah Madsen, emerged from the elevator and strode toward him, looking confident in his gray suit and red power tie. In good shape for his mid-fifties, he had thick salt-and-pepper hair and a rugged face. His press aide, Jodie Serna, a harried, middle-aged woman wearing a beige silk blouse and gray pin-striped skirt, trailed him, her heels clacking on the floor. She looked exasperated, loaded down with files. Both stared straight ahead, on a mission.
Dawson stepped forward. “Senator!” he barked, holding up his hand.
Madsen paused, looking irritated at the intrusion. “What is it?”
“That shootout at the border crossing yesterday.”
“What about it?”
“One of the three men killed was a staff member of your Las Cruces office.”
Madsen jerked his head in surprise. “Where did you get that information?”
“Why was he carrying $500,000 in U.S. currency?”
Madsen snorted as his face scrunched into a frown, his jaw muscle flexing. “No comment,” he said loudly enough for others to hear.
Dawson’s stomach tightened as nearby heads turned and conversations quieted. He wanted this conversation kept private.
“I have a committee meeting to chair, and you’re in my way,” Madsen said, again so others could hear. “So, if you’ll excuse me.”
Dawson didn’t move. “You didn’t answer my question.”
A couple of television cameramen moved in, flicking on lights.
Madsen grimaced at the cameras, his lips taut, his face reddening. He turned back to Dawson. “We’re looking into it. Now get out of my way before I call security.”
Jodie Serna jumped between them, motioning for Madsen to go into the hearing room. Madsen pulled the door open and disappeared inside. Serna shook her head disgustedly at Dawson, then went through, slamming the door behind her.
Dawson squinted in the glare of the camera lights.
“What the hell was that about?” one cameraman asked.
Dawson slipped his notebook into his jacket pocket. “Read about in tomorrow’s Herald.”
His stomach churning, Dawson hustled back down the hall and into the committee room’s public entrance, then stood in the rear. Madsen, the senior senator from New Mexico, sat in the center of the committee desk. Having composed himself, he banged his gavel down, cleared his throat, and scanned the crowd.
“Drug war violence is a deadly plague along the U.S.-Mexico border. Of particular concern is the recent gun battle at the Rancho la Peña border crossing in southern New Mexico. Because of this, I am going to conduct an emergency field hearing in El Paso to assess the state of our border security. I urge all committee members to attend. With that, I call our first witness.”
After handing the gavel to his vice-chair, Madsen stood and left the hearing room, shaking a few hands on his way out.
Dawson sucked in a breath and left for the newsroom. He hadn’t expected Madsen to say a damned thing. Yet he was satisfied. Madsen now knew that he was watching him. That alone was worth it.
* * *
Dawson jaywalked across the street and quickly scaled the steps to the Washington Herald, his employer for the past eight of his more than twenty years in journalism. The story about Madsen’s staffer could make this re-election race between the sitting president, liberal Democrat Barry Montgomery Harris, and Madsen, his conservative challenger, very interesting. Three people shot dead in their vehicles by drug cartel henchmen as they waited in line to cross the border into Mexico. Two were Mexicans. The third was a U.S. citizen—Madsen’s staffer—who had no apparent reason to be there. It was the kind of thing that unraveled campaigns. Just find a loose thread and pull. His pulse quickened at the thought. Game on.
He pushed through the glass and brass-handled doors, then waved his ID card at the guard as he hustled across the lobby to the elevator, sandwiching himself inside as the door dinged shut.
Dawson stepped from the elevator and balked at the sea of fluorescent-lit desks and waist-high dividers that filled the newsroom. He hated the fake light and felt a headache coming on. This was a far cry from Iraq and Afghanistan, where each day was a damned miracle. When you went out on a story, you might not come back. If you did, you might not have all your body parts. I’m back. I’m back now, he kept telling himself. It had been a way of life that he would never forget. Ever.
Dawson tried to be grateful for the assignment to cover Senator Madsen’s run for the White House. Everyone said it was a reward. Help him take the next step up the ladder. Ladder to what? Covering this campaign was suffocating. The predictable quotes, poll-driven speeches, minutiae magnified to ridiculous proportions. An exposé on this border shootout could put him back in the field, where he belonged, where he could breathe, where things really mattered. But first he needed one man’s approval.
Dawson stood at the open office door of his boss, Ed Frankel. The managing editor was as tough as they come. The glory days of big newsroom travel budgets were gone. The campaign was a priority. Dawson knew his pitch had to be a damned good one. He took a breath and rapped his knuckles on the frame.
Frankel swiveled from his computer screen and frowned, looking irritated at the interruption. A stocky man in his late sixties, Frankel was on the verge of retirement. His habitual paisley tie hung loosely at the neck, frayed around the knot. The chest pocket of his white shirt was spotted from pens he’d forgotten to cap. Matching his cropped white hair was a drooping white mustache, accenting a face creased from forty years in the news business.
“What did Madsen say?” Frankel asked.
“He wanted to know where we got the information.”
“And?”
“He said they’re looking into it. They’re scrambling, trying to figure out how to spin it.”
“Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy,” Frankel said. “But we still need to explain the connection. Can we quote your buddy Garcia?”
“His name stays out of it,” Dawson said. “Deep background. That’s the deal.”
“Of course. Deep Throat’s back. So what can we print?”
“The U.S. citizen who was killed—Madsen’s staffer from the Las Cruces office—was just a kid, twenty-one, a student at New Mexico State.”
“What about the money he was carrying?”
Dawson shrugged. “It had to be drug money.”
“The staffer was dealing drugs?”
“No one carries that much money by accident.”
“You’re right.”
“Obviously, the Mexicans knew money was coming across the border. The shooters on the Mexican side riddled the vehicle. Tried to take the money. The Border Patrol fired back. It got pretty nasty. Three U.S. border guards are in critical condition.”
Frankel paused. “All that at a border crossing? Incredible. Remind me not to go. Anything else?”
“Not so far.”
“We have a few more hours till deadline. Keep pushing.”
Dawson cleared his throat. “Madsen’s called an emergency committee meeting in El Paso to look into the shooting. I want to go cover it.”
“El Paso is home for you, right?”
“My parents live near there.”
“Are you missing them or something?”
“Madsen is milking the border issue all he can. He hopes to ride the issue into the White House. There’s a war happening along the border. I’d like to take a serious look at it. This shooting is just the tip of the iceberg.”
Frankel groaned. “This is not a good time to pull you off the campaign and send you to El Paso on what could be a wild goose chase.”
“No one is writing about what’s behind the violence. That’s the real story.”
“Causes are not news. Leave that thumb-sucking stuff to the columnists.”
“Drugs and migrants flow north, and guns and money flow south. They just step over the dead bodies and keep shooting.”
“Jesus, Dawson. You don’t give up, do you?”
“We need a story with meat.”
Frankel leaned back, locking his fingers behind his head. “This newspaper’s on freakin’ life support. We need another Watergate or we’re all going to be on the street. Where the hell’s Richard Nixon when you need him?”
“This story has potential. I swear.”
Frankel gazed out his window at the Washington skyline. Dawson had heard all of his stories. Like how he had interviewed rebel commanders no one else could find, once with a gun to his head, held by a fidgety fighter who needed only a nod from his boss to pull the trigger. Frankel had always gotten the story, but never the prize. So he had settled for shepherding prize-winning stories by Dawson and other reporters. Dawson held his breath. He’d dangled the bait. Now he’d see if Frankel would bite.
Frankel sucked in a breath. “Put it in writing. I’ll see what I can do.”
Chapter 2
Doña Ana County, New Mexico
Special Agent Raoul Garcia surveyed the crime scene, his eyes shaded by iridescent sunglasses, his lips pressed together. Garcia scuffed his suede desert boots on the grit, then tugged up his cargo pants and smoothed his black DEA T-shirt inside the waistband. The blazing sun heated the Special Forces boonie hat covering his shaved head. Garcia clenched his jaw as he stroked his closely cut goatee. The more he thought about the dead man on the ground nearby, the angrier he got. “Friggin’ bastards,” he said.
The Dona Ana County sheriff had called him a couple of hours earlier, saying that his deputies had found a body. Despite the head wound, the sheriff said they were confident it was Sam Dawson. Garcia had left immediately.
By the time he arrived, crime scene tape fluttered everywhere, bouncing in the hot wind that blew across the desert scrub. A couple of county sheriff deputies stood by their vehicles as blue and red emergency lights pierced the sunlight. State Police investigators milled about. Green and white Border Patrol trucks were parked nearby. Flies buzzed angrily.
Garcia nodded to the deputies as he lifted the tape and stepped closer to get a good look. The victim’s head was held together by the duct tape, the jaw mangled, upper teeth and bone exposed. Yeah, it was Sam Dawson. As if Sam was hard to miss. The jowly face, no neck, barrel chest, and medicine-ball belly covered by a bloodstained polo shirt monogrammed with the country club logo.
Garcia had known Kyle Dawson’s dad since forever. “Shee-it,” Garcia said with a sigh. Times were different back then. Innocent. Where had it all gone wrong?
The gun battle at the border crossing two days earlier was bad enough. Now this. Sam Dawson was dead, executed to be precise. A high-profile land developer with strong political connections. And the father of his cousin and best friend. That black cloud that he felt hovering over Juárez was growing. Now Kyle was involved.
Two medical technicians from the Las Cruces hospital unfolded a black body bag, placed it on the ground, and zipped it open. They pulled on latex gloves.
“Help me here,” one said, swatting at swarming flies.
The other brushed away crawling ants and used a pocket blade to cut the tape that bound Sam’s wrists, freeing the arms beset by rigor mortis.
Garcia remembered Sam’s hands, big enough to palm a basketball. Sam used them to pat the backs of friends and prospective land buyers. The technicians stooped to lift the body, then worked the legs into the bag.
He gazed at the wire fence that marked the U.S.-Mexico border, stretching into the horizon, fading into the sand and sparse brush. Just five strands of barbed wire that marked the dividing line between two countries tied together in more ways than most people wanted to admit. The sun felt heavy on his shoulders. Garcia had already made one call. He dreaded the next.
A white Chevy Tahoe bounced over the gravel and skidded to a stop. The doors were emblazoned with a blue “7 News” inside a circle. El Paso television reporter Anita Alvarez stepped out, her dark hair cascading to her shoulders. She wore a turquoise blouse with a deep neckline, a linen jacket, designer jeans, and running shoes. Damn, Garcia thought. She always looked good. Hadn’t aged a day from high school. He took a deep breath and slowly exhaled.
She hurried toward him, holding a reporter’s notebook to shade her eyes. “Thanks for the call, Raoul. I can’t believe someone would kill—” She caught her breath as she saw the body, then turned away, wincing. “Oh, Jesus.”
The medical technicians noisily zipped the bag shut. They groaned as they heaved it onto a gurney, which they shoved into the back of the ambulance and slammed the doors shut. They climbed into the cab, revved the engine, and drove off. Garcia watched the vehicle disappear in the scrub before bouncing onto the paved road.
“Did the Borrego cartel do this?” Anita asked, squinting in the sunlight.
Garcia lifted his hat and ran a hand over his head stubble. “A lot people in Juárez could do this.”
“Why Sam Dawson? Everybody loved him.”
“Not everybody.”
“Ten years of covering the drug wars. Tho
usands dead. This one hits close to home.”
“Yeah, it does.” Garcia walked to his unmarked black SUV, opened the door, and climbed in. He lowered the tinted glass window.
“Hey, I need to talk to you,” Anita said.
“Go talk to those guys,” Garcia said, pointing a thumb at the Dona Ana County Sheriff’s Department truck. “They got jurisdiction here.”
“The sheriff doesn’t know crap.”
Garcia shrugged.
“Does Kyle know about this?”
“I’m calling him now.” Garcia showed her his phone.
Anita looked at him. “Raoul?”
“What?”
“Thanks for making the call.”
Garcia nodded again and waited until she returned to her vehicle, where she slid into the front seat and made a call. Her cameraman stood nearby, panning the scene.
Garcia tapped the speed dial and held the phone to his ear.
Chapter 3
Washington, D.C.
Dawson sat at his cluttered desk, wondering when Frankel would have an answer to his request. He needed a break from the campaign. Badly. His junked-up desk was a hazard of the business, he told himself, due to the endless blizzard of press releases, studies, and reports, each spiral-bound, stapled, or glued. Much of it he refused to toss. Reference material. Someday it would come in handy. He subscribed to the bumper sticker philosophy another reporter had pasted on the side of his computer: “A clean desk is the sign of a sick mind.” And this? Healthy chaos.
He leaned back in his chair, switched on the computer, and thought about the story he was about to write. It was short on details, but the link to Madsen, now in the throes of a presidential election, gave it strong news value.
Madsen’s dead staffer had only come on board six months earlier. A third-year student majoring in political science. Madsen’s office said the kid had been vetted, but apparently not well enough. The staffer had no apparent involvement in the drug trade or a criminal record. Jobs like the one this student had were political payoffs to friends and donors. That a twenty-one-year-old was walking around with half a million dollars was no accident. Nor was the fact that he was with those Mexicans. But Madsen’s office wouldn’t comment, which was why he had tracked down the man himself.
Enemy of the People Page 30
