Noble gazed out the window at the Cessna as it geared up for take-off. “I hope you didn’t come all this way to test the new recruits.”
“We lost contact with Torres,” Burke said.
A block of ice dropped into Noble’s gut, pinning him to the seat. He had served side by side with Jesús Torres in the Green Berets. They had fought and bled together on three different continents. Torres had saved Noble’s life more than once. He leaned back in the seat and chewed the inside of one cheek. “What happened?”
“He was in Mexico City, infiltrating the Los Zetas drug cartel. Heard of it?”
Noble shrugged. “Only what I see on Fox News.”
“Then you are better informed than most.” Burke picked up his burger, took a bite and spoke around a mouthful of food. “They make the Medellin cartel of the eighties look like the JV team. They’re one of the most ruthless gangs in Mexico. Nearly half the cocaine coming across our southern border is courtesy of the Los Zetas. The guy running the show is called Machado.”
“The Axe,” Noble translated.
Burke nodded, wiped his mouth with a napkin and said, “He was a foot soldier during the drug wars of the late eighties. Made a name for himself as a cutthroat killer. Likes to chop his victims up. Sort of his calling card.”
“Sounds like a real charmer,” Noble observed.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Burke said. “Ten years ago, Mexican authorities arrested El Matatan. He was running the show back then. The cops put him away with the help of a judge who refused to be bought off. Those are rare in Mexico. Machado, who was El Matatan’s top lieutenant at the time, stepped up. In retaliation for El Matatan’s incarceration, Machado murdered the judge and his entire family.”
“Let me guess,” Noble said, “with an axe?”
“A hatchet, to be precise,” said Burke. “Then he burnt the judge’s house to the ground. Since then, Machado has been eliminating the competition and consolidating the drug trade under one roof. DHS sees the Los Zetas cartel as a significant threat to national security. Used to be these guys just shipped blow across the border. Now they smuggle munitions and radical Islamists as well.”
“Where does Torres come in?” Noble asked, making rings with his coffee cup on the table.
“Eighteen months ago, we laid in an operation codenamed riptide. The objective was to gather intel on Los Zetas. That information would then be used by the DHS in a joint operation with Mexican authorities to take down the cartel and stem the tide of drugs flooding the United States.”
“And Torres was the tip of the spear,” Noble said.
Burke inclined his head. “He infiltrated the gang posing as a pilot. We were getting good intel but it was all surface level stuff. About six months ago, Torres developed an asset by the name of Alejandra Domingo and put her in Machado’s bed. We were getting everything: names, dates, shipments, even the location of the refining facilities. Two weeks ago, the information pipeline suddenly stopped. We don’t know if Torres is alive or dead.”
Noble’s brow pinched. When an operation goes sideways, agents are trained to “go dark.” Standard procedure is to stay off radar until it’s safe to make contact, but two weeks is more than enough time to make it across the border from Mexico. If Torres hadn’t turned up by now…
Noble didn’t want to think about that. He said, “Who’s leading the search and rescue?”
Burke picked up a half-eaten fry, examined it, tossed it back on the plate. “No one at CIA seems interested in finding out what happened. Foster tied the operation off.”
“A field officer goes missing and no one wants to know what happened to him?”
Burke bared his teeth in a humorless grin. “I’ve been ordered to leave it alone.”
Noble swore under his breath. It was bad enough the CIA had destroyed his career over the death of a crooked politician. Now they had left one of his brothers out in the cold.
Burke said, “We think Torres mailed a package shortly after he dropped off radar. We don’t know where he sent it or what was inside.”
Noble went back to staring out the window. The Cessna had taken wing and another small plane was coming in for a landing. It touched down with a shriek of tires, then taxied toward the gate. “Is that why Boy Wonder is following me?”
“Foster is afraid if you got a package from Torres you might run down to Mexico to help your friend.”
“And if I did?” Noble asked.
“Foster would send someone to intercept you.”
“Guess it’s a good thing I didn’t get any packages.”
“Good thing,” Burke said. He checked his watch. “I’d better go. I’ve got to catch a flight back to D.C.”
“How was Torres passing information?” Noble asked.
“Through a local cut out at the Santa Ana Mission in Mexico City.” Burke dropped several crumpled bills on the table and then levered his bulk out of the booth. “A priest by the name of Cordero. Watch your six, pilgrim.”
Noble stared into his coffee cup. When he was nine or ten, his dad had taken him to the carnival. They had gone through the hall of mirrors together. In one mirror, ten-year-old Jake and his father were extremely tall and thin. In the next they were short and fat. In another they were shaped like Dali’s clocks, bent and strange.
The intelligence community is a lot like a wilderness of mirrors. Nothing is what it seems. Burke might be operating off the reservation—feeding Noble info out of loyalty to the old unit—or this could be part of some deeper plot. Maybe the spymasters in the Clandestine Service were manipulating him into doing their dirty work. In the end, it didn’t really matter. His friend was missing and Noble was going to find him. He owed Torres that much.
He drained his coffee, left a tip, and slid out of the booth.
Chapter Thirteen
Noble walked east to 4th Street and then turned north, staying in the shade as much as possible to escape the heat. College kids with tattoos and nose rings were collecting votes for the democratic candidate on one side of the street. Working class stiffs, tired of government corruption, campaigned for the insurgent on the other side. The two opposing forces were close to open warfare. A third group was collecting signatures to legalize pot. They looked a lot like the first group.
Noble stepped inside a secondhand record store with a picture window and a good view of the street. Vinyl shops were cropping up all over downtown Saint Pete. Noble couldn’t figure out the craze. Why buy vinyl when he could keep all his music on a device that fit in his pocket?
This one had Bob Marley posters tacked to the walls and stank of incense. Music, some indie label that Noble didn’t recognize, piped through the speakers. He pretended to flip through a collection of old jazz records near the door and watched the sidewalk for tails. After the record shop, he crossed the street to a craft beer garden. He asked to use the toilet and left through a back door which opened onto a trash-strewn alley. He continued north, taking turns at random and doubling back to throw off pursuit, until he reached a towering block of pink concrete called the Wyndham Arms.
It was promoted as an assisted living facility for “active seniors.” Noble owed a bill roughly half the size of Bill Gates’ fortune to the medical establishment for their work putting his mother’s cancer into remission, and the second half of that fortune in rent to the Wyndham Arms.
The double doors hissed open and blast of cold air chilled the sweat on his forehead. The lobby could have passed for a plush hotel with leather armchairs and deep-piled carpet. A fake fire danced in a hearth. In the winter, it actually emitted heat. An old-timer with rheumy eyes sat in a wheelchair, gazing out the window. Noble scrawled his name on a sign-in sheet at the front desk and went in search of his mother.
He found her in the recreation room, playing gin rummy with three other women. Her gray hair was falling out in places—a result of the chemotherapy—and her skin was like parchment. A thick cable knit sweater swaddled her wasted frame. The
battle with cancer had been too close to call, but Mary Elise Noble was a stubborn woman with a will of iron.
She picked up a card, laid down two runs and a discard. “Gin!”
The other ladies crowed.
Noble walked over. “You ever let anybody else win, mom?”
“Not if I can help it.” Her eyes lit up at the sight of him. A weak smile hitched the corners of her mouth. It was good to see her smile. The last two months at the Wyndham Arms had been good for her. She had gotten some of her old strength back and made a few friends. She introduced Noble to her card buddies. He would never remember their names and didn’t try. They spent thirty minutes telling him what a great son he was for visiting his mother.
“Feel up to a walk?” Noble asked.
“After two years in a hospital bed? I’m ready to run, but I’ll settle for a walk.”
She excused herself from the game.
Jake offered his arm. She slipped her frail hand through the crook of his elbow. He led her away from the card table to a pair of doors that opened onto a garden. She closed her eyes and turned her face up to the sun. “Sure does feel good.”
It felt like walking into an oven, but Noble didn’t tell her that. “How are you feeling?”
“Better,” she said. “Every day is a little better.”
They shuffled along a sidewalk which wound its way through a manicured garden. A snail could have kept pace.
“So you met Shawn Hennessey?” his mother asked.
“Sure did,” Jake said.
“What’s he like?”
“Shorter than I thought.”
“You’re tense,” she said. “Is it the money?”
“Isn’t it always?”
“God will provide.”
Wish he’d provide a little faster, Noble thought to himself. He didn’t dare say it out loud though. Not in front of Mary Elise Noble. It would only start an argument.
“I’m going to be out of town for a couple of days,” he told her.
Her grip on his forearm tightened. “For a man who doesn’t have a job, you stay awful busy.”
“Will you be alright while I’m gone?”
“If the food in here doesn’t kill me.”
Jake laughed. “I have some money coming in from Hennessey,” he told her. “You should be set for a while.”
Her thin lips pressed together in a tight line. The sidewalk had brought them in a large loop back to the double doors. She paused in the sunlight. “Thought you were done working for the Company.”
“This isn’t for the Company,” he said. “A friend needs my help.”
She locked eyes with him.
“Nothing dangerous,” he told her.
Her expression said she didn’t buy it. “Want to try that line again?”
He held up three fingers in the boy scout salute. “Honest Injun.”
They shuffled through the doors into the recreation room. “Promise me you’ll be careful.”
“I always am,” Jake said. “In the meantime, you take it easy and get your strength back.”
“Lord willing,” she said.
He grunted. Over that last several weeks they had reached an uneasy truce on the subject of God and the afterlife. Both realized their difference in opinion would tear them apart if they let it.
They passed a seating area where the television was tuned to CNN. Noble glanced at the screen. He was already tired of election coverage, but something registered at the back of his mind and he did a double take.
A moment later, he was fighting his way past the maze of walkers to get at the controller. The residents balked at the sudden intrusion. Noble ignored them, grabbed the remote, and started jabbing buttons.
“Jake?” his mother said. “What’s gotten into you?”
“How do you go back?” Noble asked, pushing buttons to no effect.
“Lemme see it.” An elderly black man in a wheelchair with tuffs of white hair over his ears held out an arthritic hand.
Noble passed over the remote. The last television show he had watched with any enthusiasm was Firefly, and that was long before the invention of the DVR.
The old man keyed a command into the remote and the image on the screen raced backwards. Noble felt foolish getting tech help from a ninety-year-old in a wheelchair. Maybe he should revisit those record stores? He watched people speeding around in reverse. “There!” he barked. “Stop. Play.”
The old man triggered the remote. On screen, Secretary of State Helen Rhodes was stepping off a tour bus outside a convention center in New Hampshire. Cameras flashed. Rhodes waved and smiled. A crowd pushed against blue police barricades. But Noble wasn’t interested in Rhodes. He was watching the entourage of aides exiting the bus.
He pointed. “Pause! Pause!”
The old man froze the screen.
Noble was staring at a still image of Samantha Gunn getting out of Helen Rhodes’ tour bus. She was dressed in a pinstripe jacket and skirt with her hair pulled back in a ponytail. The image was blurry, the camera was focused on the Secretary of State, but there was no mistake.
“What the hell…” Noble muttered to himself.
Six months ago, Sam had been running a shelter for abused women in the Philippines. When her best friend was kidnapped by a ruthless kingpin, she had taken the law into her own hands and proved her courage in a firefight that would have reduced most grown men to Jell-O. Noble never would have figured her for a political aide, especially not for the likes of Helen Rhodes.
At least now he knew why she wasn’t returning his calls.
“You done?” the old man asked with a hint of annoyance. “Mind if we get on with the news?”
Noble muttered an apology and fought his way back through the sea of walkers, still trying to make sense of it. Why would Sam go to work for Helen Rhodes?
His mother said, “Friend of yours?”
“Huh?”
She thrust her chin at the screen. “That girl getting out of the bus,” she said. “Do you know her?”
“Yes,” Noble said. “Er… no. No, I guess I didn’t know her as well as I thought I did.”
He said goodbye to his mother, waved to her card table buddies, and then legged it south toward the marina. The surveillance van was still slotted next to Pioneer Park under the shade of an oak tree. An angry line of black clouds was crawling in from the west. It was summer and just after four o’clock in Florida, which meant it was time for the afternoon thunder shower. You can practically set your watch by it. A strong breeze stirred the tree limbs. Leaves murmured to each other in their secret language. The air smelled like rain. Noble hurried along the docks to the Yeoman. The first heavy drop landed on his shoulder as he stepped on deck. A moment later the skies opened up. He hauled the cabin door shut. Rain hammered the roof. A fork of lightning blazed across the sky outside the galley windows. Thunder followed.
The Yeoman rolled on the choppy swell. With one hand on the bulkhead for support, Noble climbed into the hold, took a screwdriver from the tool chest and then went to his cabin. A Remington 870 shotgun leaned against the wall next to his bunk. His underwater camera sat atop a chest of drawers next to a photo of Sam. The picture was a reproduction of her college I.D. printed at a local Kinko’s. Noble had cashed in a favor with a friend still working at the Directorate of Support who had managed to hack the Yale database and forward Noble the photograph. It was a little grainy, but Sam smiled at him from a cheap Walmart frame.
What was she doing working a political campaign for Helen Rhodes? Politics is a dirty game, but Rhodes took corruption to a new level. She had sat in the Situation Room at the White House and watched Islamic terrorists overrun an American embassy in Libya, killing four Americans. When questioned about it she had blurted out, “What difference does it make now?” Noble couldn’t believe that Sam would knowingly go to work for anyone as blatantly corrupt as Rhodes.
He left the cabin door open and removed the screw plate from the door hinge. Under
neath was a small recess in the wood known in the intelligence community as a slip. He reached inside and pulled out the key. All he had to do now was shake the CIA watchdogs and get to Mexico.
Rain still pounded the roof. He wasn’t going anywhere for the next fifteen or twenty minutes, so he used the time to fry up a tripletail from the icebox and boil rice. By the time he finished eating, the storm had spent its fury and the sun poked its head out. The air turned muggy hot.
Noble fired up the engines and motored out of South Yacht Basin, headed due east toward Tampa. He was about to cross a line and there was no going back. Once in Mexico City, he would be on his own, operating off the reservation.
Chapter Fourteen
Machado was a hulking figure in a red Puma track suit, pacing around like a caged lion. He had a shaved head and a neck the size of a normal man’s thigh. Blood dripped from his knuckles.
The room was bare concrete walls in the basement of his mansion. A naked bulb hung from the ceiling and there was a drain in the middle of the floor. Juan Busto Esparza—a high ranking agent in Mexico’s PFM, the Policía Federal Ministerial—was lashed to a chair by razor wire. He was naked and covered in his own blood. They had ripped out his fingernails and toenails before starting in on his face.
Machado stopped pacing long enough to slam a fist into Esparza’s face. The impact made a meaty crack.
Ten years ago, a major heart attack had nearly killed Machado. The experience changed him. He gave up excess eating and drinking and found he actually liked working out. Machado had shed nearly a hundred pounds of fat. Now he was an impressive two-hundred and twenty pounds of solid muscle. He never took steroids. He prided himself on being a natural bodybuilder. His results were the product of lean proteins, healthy fats and heavy lifting. The musclebound physique had become a symbol of his indomitable will and when he punched, he put all two-hundred and twenty pounds into it.
He shook blood from his knuckles. “Where is the girl?”
Esparza turned his head to the side and spat out a broken tooth. “I don’t know.”
Noble Vengeance Page 5
