Back in the car, Nora considered how to deal with these cartel people. They weren’t service workers like movers or landscapers who deserved at least basic civility. They were criminals. One thing she’d learned in the Military Police and with the Bureau was that it doesn’t pay to be nice to criminals. They respect the hard line. Any sign of weakness and like those half-wild dogs down the street, they attack. Time to roll out Kick-Ass Khaled.
Luis pointed out the windshield toward their ten o’clock. “There, by the loading dock.”
A silver Chinese Geely four-door—the kind all the rental-car outlets had—sat at the end of the handcart ramp leading to the dead post office’s loading dock. As they crept closer, the driver’s door swung open. A head in a baseball cap and sunglasses appeared above the roof. Then so did a pistol, aimed at them.
“I think that means ‘stop,’” Luis told Ray.
They got out at the same time and stayed behind the Lexus’ doors. Luis had his hand around the Sig’s grip, ready to go. His scalp tingled. Was this some sort of trap? Their car and hers were at most twenty feet apart; if shooting started, not many rounds would miss.
Ray said, “Nora? I’m Rico, this is…” he checked Luis’ face “…Juan.”
Her aviator shades shifted between them. “Come out from behind the doors.” She had a clear, strong command voice. She’d done this before. Luis didn’t feel better for knowing that.
Ray muttered something Luis couldn’t catch, then said, “You called us here, remember?”
“Come out in the open. Keep your hands where I can see them.”
Luis shot Ray a what-is-this? glance; Ray blew out a breath, then shrugged. They both slid around their doors at the same time, keeping their hands at hip level, palms flat, visible but not out of action. Leaving that door behind made Luis’ gut clench.
She aimed between them, leaving her options open. “Put your weapons on the hood.”
“Sorry, chica, no way.” Ray said it with more heat than Luis liked. This woman was worth a lot of money. She could hold a gun on him for a while if she wanted…as long as she didn’t shoot him.
“Uh, Rico?” Luis said. “The customer’s always right.”
“Not always.” Ray took a couple strong steps forward. Luis had tried this ploy before; sometimes the most bad-ass dog will slink away from a show of force. Sometimes, though, it’ll rip your leg off. “Look, chica, secure your weapon and we’ll have a nice talk, like people. But if you don’t stand down, one of us is going to have to put you down. Got it?”
The woman’s Glock stared right at Ray. Sweat rolled down Luis’ back. Would she slink or rip?
After a tense moment, she asked, “First Battalion, 26th Infantry, right?”
Luis felt his insides freeze. How did she know that? What else does she know?
Ray swallowed. “Say what?”
“You’re Ramiro Esquivel, the plaza boss here. Aren’t you, Rico?”
Ray literally chewed on this for a moment. “Area manager.”
“You look younger than your file photo. Good trick.” She slowly raised her pistol until it pointed straight up, then holstered it.
The knot in Luis’ bowels loosened just a bit. “I hope you’re Nora, after all that.”
“I am.” She edged out from behind her door, slid to her left, and touched her fingertips to the fender. She was smaller than he’d imagined, five-six or so and slender, with a black long-sleeved tee shirt tucked into fresh, dark jeans. A blue Disneyland ball cap threw a shadow over her face.
When Ray and Luis reached the other side of her car’s hood, Luis could see the face in the portrait Ray had shown him: high cheekbones, thin, slightly-hooked nose and full lips below her sunglasses. Her skin was about the same shade as his, light for a Mexicano, dark for an Anglo. Judging from the definition in her arms and hands, she was seriously fit.
Ray said, “Were you followed? Is that why you changed up on us?”
“No, no physical tail, I was just being careful. I have to be.” The aviators gave Ray an up-and-down scan. “I know who you are, but–” she jerked her chin at Luis “–who’s he?”
She didn’t know him. Luis felt a tingle of relief. “Your tour guide. Where’s your family right now?”
“None of your business.”
He’d half-expected this need-to-know shit, but she said it as if he’d asked to roast her children on a spit. Luis took a breath before he answered. “I’d hoped to meet all of you so I have some idea what I have to work with. It helps me figure out how to get you across.”
She crossed her arms and aimed the mirrored shades at Luis—real sunglasses, no tell-tale data-feed glow on her cheekbone. Her mouth puckered. “Not yet. If you have to know, they’re at Disneyland, where I’m supposed to be, and where my Bureau phone is. They track our phones.” She looked toward Ray. “If you don’t mind, can we get this over with so I can get back there? I’d like to use the ticket we paid for.”
No doubt; one day would’ve cost almost a grand for the four of them. The last time he and Bel could afford to go, Luis worked for the county and the kids were in grade school.
“If you’ve got that kind of money,” Luis asked, “what do you need us for? Why don’t you just fly out of the country and not come back?”
She gave him a tight, bitter half-smile. “If it was that easy, we would. The Bureau controls all our travel. We have to ask permission to go international, and they don’t give permission unless you leave a family member behind for insurance. They’d be all over us the minute we bought tickets. They’re really sensitive about losing agents.”
“Defectors?” Ray said, a half-laugh in his voice.
“Yes. Defectors.” Her voice got even harder. “We’ve lost a dozen agents to Canada just in the past year. Now they’ve flagged us in the system so we come up red when we scan out at a border crossing.” She turned back to Luis, her mouth even tighter. “We’d love to do this ourselves, believe me. I arrest people like you, you’re the last ones I want to come to for help. But here I am. Can we get on with this?”
Luis swapped a do-you-believe-this? look with Ray. With her attitude, they’d earn their money. Ray’s shrug said Luis could walk out on this job anytime.
If only he could.
He turned back to Nora. It bothered him that he couldn’t see her eyes. It was like talking to a robot, which he still wasn’t used to. “How old are your kids?”
Her mouth worked while she digested this. “Six and four.”
Luis flashed back to the little girl on his last disastrous run, that silent bundle under her dead mom. “Well, that makes things harder. Littles don’t understand secrets or using a fake name. They don’t have our stamina. You can’t tell what they’re going to say.”
“If you’re trying to tell me to go without them, forget it. We leave as a family, end of discussion, all right?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He asked Ray, “We working their IDs?”
“The lab’s standing by. We still need photos, prints and scans.”
Nora asked, “How good are your IDs?”
“Good enough for this,” Luis told her. He could usually tap-dance around the subject and normal travelers didn’t know the difference. He knew better than to try that now. “They’ll get you through a Level 1 scan about 98% of the time. Level 2’s maybe fifty percent. It’s hard to beat the databases. With any luck, you’ll only have to use them once.”
Her mouth turned down. “They’d better work. I’m paying enough for them.”
Travelers were usually grateful, not bitchy like her. Luis counted to five before he replied. “We’re going to need to see all of you very soon. I need ID photos of the kids, and we’ll need to change your face and your husband’s.”
“Change our faces? Why? Aren’t we hiking out? I thought that’s how it’s done.”
Ray shook his head. “Are you going to argue with everything, chica?”
The glasses stared at Ray for a few long beats. “I may not
speak Spanish, but I know what chica means.” Ice cubes clinked in her voice. “If you call me that again, I’ll shoot you. Do you understand?”
Chica? Seriously? She’d put up with enough of that crap in the Bureau; she certainly wouldn’t take it from this scum. Let him get away with it and he’d grope her next.
This Esquivel meathead must’ve caught that she was serious. He put up both hands and said, “Five-by-five.”
The other one—Juan, not his real name—tapped the Geely’s hood to get her attention. “We can’t go overland because of the kids, so we’ll have to try to take you through a crossing. We’ll need to get you past the facial recognition to do that.” He gave her a thin smile. “Don’t worry, you won’t end up looking like some movie monster.”
While Juan spoke, the Esquivel jerk had snapped a battery onto his phone pod. He now stepped away from the car, tapped his earpiece, and said “It’s me.” She couldn’t hear the conversation by the time he reached the ramp.
Nora swapped stares with Juan for a moment. “Okay, I get it. You might as well know, the more information you give me, the better I do. How long have you been doing this?”
“Since the beginning.”
Twelve years? That would make him one of their senior coyotes. Good; they were taking this seriously.
Juan tapped the hood again. “Did the mapache back East tell you how this works?”
“You mean the Baja ‘trade representative’? Not really.”
“Okay, the short version. I get you over the border and hand you off to my guy down there. He takes you to the Tijuana airport and puts you on a plane to Mexico City. Once you’re there, you’re on your own, we don’t care where you go.” Juan’s face turned sour for a moment. “I guess this is where I remind you I’ll be taking your family into the middle of a civil war.”
Like she needed the reminder. “I’m aware of that.”
“Okay. Since you’re FBI, I guess you’re a citizen.”
“I was born here.” She used to be proud to say that. Now it made her mad to have to keep repeating it. “So was Paul, so were the kids. How often do you get asked that?”
“Pretty often, these days. Why are you doing this?”
“Why do you care?”
“I’m sticking my neck out for you. I need to know what it means to you.”
Nora paused to size him up again. This Juan wasn’t anything like she’d expected. He was mature, businesslike, not some swaggering, macho young punk. Even though the flop sweat under his arms showed he was nervous, his eyes were…calm? Was that the word? At least he wasn’t looking at her like some bimbo in a bar, the way the other guy had.
“Probably the same reason your other customers do it.”
“I don’t think so. You’ve got a secure job, you’ve got money. Why are you leaving?”
She should just blow him off. It wasn’t his business. On the other hand, Juan was going into harm’s way for her. She couldn’t bring herself to curry favor with him, but she could at least align his interests with hers. Besides, she didn’t have to tell him everything— just enough.
“My husband is a lawyer,” she began. “Paul is chief counsel for the Arab American Institute. It’s a K Street lobby back home, the last Islamic one left.” She glanced toward Esquivel to confirm he was still out of hearing range. “I found out they’re going on the list of groups that support terrorism.”
“They don’t, do they?”
She kicked out a short, nasty little laugh. “Of course not, not that it matters. Look at what happened to the ACLU and the SPLC.”
“SPLC?”
“Southern Poverty Law Center. No, they’ll go on the list and Paul will be in a camp in a week. I’ll lose my security clearance, and then I’ll lose my job and I’ll probably end up in a camp, too.” She heard the anger in her voice and tried to squash it. He didn’t need to know how much this insanity hurt her. “But they won’t let me be Paul’s cellmate or anything. They’ll send me someplace special because of what I know. Pecos, maybe, or Dugway.” She stopped, licked her lips, turned her gaze toward the dead gas station next door. This part was the hardest. “Then the kids… they’ll give our kids to some white couple who’ll turn them into good Christians. That’s what they do to orphaned Muslim kids, did you know that?”
“I had no idea. I know sometimes they put them in camps, too.”
“Yes, the darker ones, the ones they can’t foster out.” She checked Esquivel—still on the phone—then focused on Juan. “That’s why I’m doing this. Is it a good enough reason for you?”
He nodded. “Yeah. If it’s true.”
Nora geared up to let him have it for questioning her, then stopped. Suspicion cut both ways. Or had he picked up the editing she’d done on her story?
Esquivel jogged to the car, his feet crunching on broken glass and litter. “Sorry, folks. We good here?”
“We’re good,” Juan said. Nora nodded.
“Okay. Nora, that number you called me from, is it a burner?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Hold onto it. We’ll call you in a day or two.” Esquivel grabbed Juan’s elbow and turned to go.
“Wait a minute.” Nora put her fists on her hips. Now that Esquivel was back, she could feel her blood pressure rising. “Make it fast. We have eleven days of vacation left. If we’re not back home by the end of it, they’ll come after us. I don’t want to be on this side of the border when that happens.”
“We’ll go as fast as we can and still be safe,” Juan said.
Somehow, she wasn’t reassured.
“She’s gonna be a pain in the ass,” Luis said. But at least now he sort of understood why. She had a pretty good life, and it was about to get blown up; he’d be bitchy, too. Not that it mattered—it was still worth the fifty-grand down-payment on his debt. That’s all she had to be, a walking paycheck.
“No shit,” Ray said.
The car drove eastbound on 17th, crashing over potholes and busted pavement, Pitbull rapping on the oldies feed. The pipe-stall-and-tarp jumbles of street markets in the parking lots of failed strip malls added back some of the color lost from the faded signs and bleached paint. Vidboards flashed splashy moving ads for booze and cigarettes and guns. Gray smoke and smog hid the hills in the distance. Luis was glad for the car’s A/C so he didn’t have to smell the place.
Ray smirked. “Maybe this’ll make it hurt a little less. That call? That was Tavo. Looks like he’s the new capo, at least for now. He’s out of this.”
“This? You mean Nora?”
“Yeah. He’s cleaning house down south, he doesn’t have time. So he gave it to me.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I get Nora sorted out, I get the money.” He shrugged. “He’s buying loyalty, I get it. He probably needs all he can get. But, who cares? It’s a wad.”
That got Luis’ full attention. “How much?”
“Two hundred large.” Ray grinned at him. “Want half?”
Half? A hundred grand? That would wipe out a quarter of what he owed the Cartel. But why would Ray just hand him that kind of bonus? Then it hit him: Tavo was moving up, so might Ray. He was buying loyalty, too. And it was a bribe to not run away. “You serious?”
“There’s a catch. I can’t deal with that bruja, I’ll strangle her. You do it. Set her up, take her south, get rid of her. Believe me, she stays like that—” he thumbed out the back window “—you’ll earn it. Deal?”
Luis tried to trace all the strings wrapped around Ray’s gift, but got lost in the tangle. It couldn’t be worse than a short life on the run, though. They shook hands over the shift knob. “Deal.”
11
TUESDAY, 4 MAY
While he waited for a call from his boss back in San Antonio, McGinley sat at his JTF desk going through his Zeta message-traffic draw. He called it his “shitbag file.” Every workday for three years, he’d had a bot rake through all the law-enforcement and collateral databases it could get to for anyth
ing about Zetas north of the border. Every once in a while it came up empty, but not often.
And not today. Feeb reports, Border Patrol logs, an update to the CIA wiki about a Mex politician the Zetas owned. The usual.
Then he read an ICE arrest report filed through the El Paso Enforcement and Removal Operations field office. Some troop tripped over a blacked-out panel van with a flat tire on U.S. 180 northbound out of Deming, New Mexico. When he stopped, the stupid son-of-a-bitch trying to change the tire drew down on him, and the ICE troop put the scumbag away. The knucklehead’s Zeta tat wasn’t hard to find. Inside the van, the ICE troop found half a dozen whores in what the report called “poor condition”—no doubt drugged up and starving—and the usual guns and drugs. Good work, McGinley told the agent.
He skimmed the particulars on the whores—habit by now—and disregarded the obvious Mex ones. But one stopped him cold.
U/I NHWF, unresponsive, app. 30-35, app. 5’3”, app. 80#, red/blue. DNA/prints submitted for ID.
Unidentified non-Hispanic white female. Sure to catch McGinley’s eye whenever and wherever he saw it. Carla Jean might be a U/I NHWF if she ever turned up.
Unless Carla Jean had done some serious changing, though, this girl wasn’t her: two inches too short, blue eyes instead of green, red hair instead of blond. This one was probably some dumb little twinkie who’d reckoned to make her fortune on her back with some narco boss and ended up hooked on kronk, servicing sicarios out of a single-wide somewhere. Still, he’d follow up. That, too, was habit by now. He shot an email at the arresting agent asking for the whore’s ID when it came back from the lab.
12
“A: Clearing through an official CBP border crossing or port station is required before leaving the United States. This ensures DHS agencies will receive prompt notification should you fail to return by your intended date and time. The State Department and CBP can then determine whether you have been detained or injured during your stay abroad.”
— Traveler Safety Initiative FAQ, U.S. Customs & Border Protection
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