South

by Lance Charnes

  With Tavo gone and Ray distracted, maybe now was the time to grab Bel and make his own run south before this insanity blew up in his face. Leave Nora before she got him killed.

  Mierda. He had a lot of thinking to do on his two-hour drive back home.

  “You two put a lot on one Lotto ticket,” he finally said.

  “I know.” Paul smiled at him. “But think of the jackpot. Will you help?”

  33

  The United States has achieved energy independence, and is even now an energy exporter, due to the elimination over the past decade of the job-killing environmental, tax, and trade regulations that once prevented America’s mining industry from developing our nation’s vast reserves of precious resources.

  — “Backgrounder on U.S. Coal,” National Mining Association

  WEDNESDAY, 12 MAY

  Sitgreaves National Forest wasn’t tore up any more than any other national forest McGinley had seen. Logging roads snaked across the clear-cut tracts, stumps and bare red dirt marking the edges of a lease, spoil in the arroyos between the rolling hills. It looked a little like Ouachita up by Little Rock, with less water.

  He pounded back his second energy drink to burn off the cobwebs from last night’s late courier flight into Tucson. Gennaro had called him yesterday afternoon, said, “We’re raiding the mine, you want in?” and McGinley hadn’t stopped moving until he was on the ramp at Davis-Monthan this morning.

  If you’re there, baby, he told Carla Jean, I’m coming for you.

  “You set, Jack?” Gennaro’s voice shot through the headset right into McGinley’s skull.

  “I am. How much longer?”

  “Five minutes. Look to your ten o’clock, it’s a helluva sight.”

  McGinley glanced out the window—the second chopper in formation at eight o’clock—then checked his ten. Jee-sus. A huge, black crater began filling up the window below the drone gunship leading the flight, spreading out to the base of the mesa out yonder, steps like layers disappearing below the rim. Black haze hung over the mine from the coal dust and diesel exhaust and chemicals and what have you. It was the biggest hole in the ground he’d ever seen.

  The chopper nosed down toward the tops of the scraggly dead trees. The ten ICE troops sharing McGinley’s space sat up, checked their weapons and gear. McGinley tightened his kevlar’s chin strap, pumped a round into his shotgun’s chamber, switched on his data goggles. He felt that buzz he’d gotten in the Army way back when, just before he jumped out of his chopper into Syria to put some hurt on the dirtbag-of-the-day.

  They roared over a clearing with a couple prefab metal warehouses in the middle, the ground black from coal dust, trucks and cars parked all over. A technical rolled out toward them, shooting, until whoosh! a few rounds from the gunship blew the pickup in half and flared the mounted fifty into the air like a bottle rocket.

  Then things got awful busy. Before he knew it, McGinley was on the gravel, sheltering behind a pickup that some asshole by the closest warehouse was taking apart with his AK. Some ICE troops fired back from behind other cars and trucks. Then he heard the gunship’s minigun go rrrrrip and the asshole disappeared in a spray of red and a couple orphaned legs.

  McGinley jogged toward the warehouse behind a trio of ICE troops. Some ol’ boy—dirty enough to be a miner—staggered out the door and got beanbagged for his effort. McGinley jumped the man’s body and found himself in a melee of miners and guards just inside the warehouse. He cracked a few with his shotgun butt, spotted a weapon, put a round into the guy holding it, and beat a couple more guys to the floor until he broke free of the ruckus and started down a corridor of cubicles screened by ratty plastic shower curtains.

  He stopped, took stock. The data goggles showed six troops inside this building, all around the entrance, and another dozen glowing dots around or in the other warehouse a few yards away. The second stick, with Gennaro. Up ‘til now, he’d been too busy to think on what he might find in here. Now that was all he could do. It was time. He ought to wait for backup, but fuck that. If Carla Jean or her friends were here, he was going to find them right now.

  Each cube held a cot, a chair and a whore. Some of them weren’t much more than girls. A good number of cubes also had a john, most of them scrambling into their clothes, but that’s what McGinley brought all those zip ties for. He’d knock the john flat, zip him up, shine his helmet-mounted light in the girl’s face, then move on.

  Four cubes in, he found his first blonde. Skinny as Joella, kronked out of her head. He stood there staring at her, almost afraid to look. Will I even know Carla Jean if I see her? If the nurses hadn’t told him that scarecrow in Otero was Joella, he wouldn’t have recognized her. He forced himself to look closer at this one, close enough to see the dark eyebrows and brown eyes surrounded by red, close enough to smell that she hadn’t washed for too long. Not her.

  He rechecked the ones he’d already passed, then picked up where he’d left off. Lots of Mexes, most so gone they didn’t know or care what was happening, each one sadder than the last. By the end of the first aisle, McGinley was fixing to lose his breakfast.

  He still had half the warehouse to scout.

  Partway down the second aisle, he found a blonde wobbling in the entrance to her cube, wearing near to nothing, looking as lost as could be. McGinley braced himself again, stared hard at her face. Not Carla Jean, damnit, thank God. He tried to match her to Carla Jean’s friends, but stopped when the whore grabbed him and started babbling in something that sounded like Russian. He pushed her away, let the disgust shake out of him, then moved on.

  Twenty-two whores. Three of them white. None of them Carla Jean or her friends.

  He was steaming mad, though, by the time he heard Gennaro’s voice in his ear. “McGinley! Get down here to the front, I got something for you.”

  ICE troops hauled the trussed-up johns out into the parking lot. Four hog-tied Mexes were lined up face-down on the floor near the door. Gennaro crouched by the one closest to McGinley. “Find anything?” Gennaro asked.

  “Three white girls, two of them maybe American. Nobody I was looking for.”

  “Sorry to hear it. This turd here—” Gennaro slapped the prisoner’s head “—is the manager of this fine place.”

  McGinley planted a boot toe in the scumbag’s ribs to keep himself from shooting the little fucker. “Get anything out of him?”

  “Not yet. He’s asking for his lawyer. I hear the corporate counsel is on his way down here from the HQ building, not that he’s gonna get anywhere near here. We got a forensic team and a bus for the hookers coming through the front gate now.” Gennaro yanked the Mex’s collar down to show off the Z-in-a-circle tattoo on the man’s neck. “Big surprise, huh?”

  Joella had been on her way here. Maybe Carla Jean or one of her gang had been here. This didn’t have to be a total loss. “Reckon you’re gonna put him in court?”

  Gennaro snorted. “What do you think?”

  McGinley nodded. Zetas that ICE got ahold of didn’t often make it in front of a judge. Some expensive lawyer would bail them out, or they’d get shanked in holding. Or—McGinley’s favorite—an unusual number got dead resisting or trying to escape.

  “Ain’t nobody left to bitch about scumbags dying in custody,” McGinley said. “How’s about me and you have a chat with this ol’ boy?”

  “Fuckin’ A, Jack, you always make this big a mess?”

  McGinley poured another bottle of water over his arms and head to rinse off the blood. He and Gennaro sat on the tailgate of a shot-to-shit pickup outside the warehouse, watching the whores get hauled onto the ICE bus a few yards away. Out in the sunshine, those girls looked even sorrier than they had inside. “Had to get him talking.”

  “Yeah, but blowing his leg off? Jesus. These were new boots.”

  The manager had been a tough little pecker, doing nothing but cussing and spitting until McGinley got his attention by taking off the shitbird’s right leg with the shotgun. After he sto
pped screaming, he started talking. The Zeta shit didn’t stop until he ran out of things to say and Gennaro put a round between the man’s eyes. Yeah, it was messier than McGinley liked, but now he knew a whole lot more about how Zetas moved their whores around. He also had a name to run down: Alcala, a Zeta logistics honcho.

  And he knew what became of the women who didn’t make it out of this hellhole. “Reckon there’s any call to drag that slurry pond?” McGinley asked.

  Gennaro shook his head. “With all the chemicals, the bodies would dissolve in a couple weeks. If she went in there, we’ll never know.”

  Just as well. McGinley was getting used to the idea Carla Jean was still alive out there somewhere. He’d hate to find out different. “You got anything good on Zeta logistics?” he asked after wiping down his arms with a rag. “I mean, better’n what the CIA has.”

  “We’ve got some stuff we’ve picked up. The Zetas push regular combat resupply through Mexican Army logistics, at least the part they control, but they still run this kind of thing themselves. I’ll get you into our wiki, you can check it out.”

  “Thank you kindly.”

  McGinley watched the bustle around him without paying it much mind. Going into this, he hadn’t quite known what he wanted to find, and now it was over, he still didn’t. Twenty-two girls would get to go home if they had homes to go to, though, and half a dozen Zeta fuckers would go in the ground. A good day’s work.

  “Gonna keep looking?” Gennaro asked.

  McGinley slid off the tailgate, slung his shotgun. He watched the bus rumble out of the parking lot with its load of lost women. The lucky ones, maybe. “Reckon so.”

  34

  While everyone knows about government spying, most people don’t know that the bulk of surveillance tech used in 2031 belongs to corporations spying on each other or, more often, on you… Walmart is believed to have the nation’s second-largest database of individually identifiable behavioral data, right after the National Security Agency…

  — “Danger Room: Peeping for Profits,” Wired.com

  WEDNESDAY, 12 MAY

  Luis ran the shop with half his brain while the other half churned the Nora problem. Did he believe her? Did he believe the 10/19 story? She had so much stuff, too much for a cover story or hoax. Then again, she’d had years to build it. It’d all seemed authentic, but was it? Could a cover-up like this stay secret for almost thirteen years?

  Maybe it hadn’t. He searched for “10/19 conspiracy” on the office slate and came up with over ten million hits. Some of them fingered white supremacists or militias, but the search summaries also showed people blaming the attack on almost every group or organization on Earth. His brain hurt after looking at just a few of those sites.

  Should he bail out of this potential disaster? He mulled this into the afternoon.

  It was one thing to run Ahmed Average to el otro lado. It was a whole different problem to get mixed up with someone on a terrorist watchlist. If he stayed with her and the FBI caught her, they’d get him too. Then what? But if he left, what would happen to her and her family? What would happen to her story?

  Is it your problem?

  Before he could answer that question, his burner buzzed in his pocket. “Hello?”

  “Juan?” Nora’s voice, tense. “We’re being watched. Can you come?”

  Just in case Nora was right, he stopped to check whether the Cartel safe house on Serra Mesa, fifteen miles west of El Cajon, was clear. He discovered an observation post in a foreclosed house across the street: a tiny camera clipped to the roof overhang, a stubby wifi antenna on the chimney to suck up any other cameras’ data, and a thin cellular antenna to pump the results out to some central monitoring station. The gear could all be bought on the web and didn’t say anything about who was using it.

  Half an hour later, Luis crouched in a weedy back yard, peeking through a hole in the fence at the safe house Nora was in.

  He wasn’t the only one watching the place.

  The drone—a slab the size of a chair cushion—buzzed a circle fifty feet over the house. The watchers here were way past remote cameras. They were within a few blocks, no more than a mile. Who were they? The list of just the possible alphabet agencies would take a while to write down, let alone the Cartel’s rivals and factions.

  The last rays of the setting sun flashed orange off the drone’s plastic body. It completely dominated all the approaches to the house. He was pinned as long as it was there. It would need to move soon, though; its haze-gray paint showed it was a daytime drone, with only a daylight camera. The watchers would need to swap in a nighttime drone with infrared and night-vision sensors if they planned to keep up their air coverage. The gap wouldn’t be enough to get Nora and her family out unobserved, though.

  Luis edged away from the missing fence boards, shook out his aching knees. Decision time. You go in there, you’re committed.

  He could leave Nora to deal with these people, whoever they were. If they thought she was a terrorist, they might not want to take her alive. Anyone who got in their way could end up as collateral damage.

  An unwanted memory slipped into his brain: Paul’s tense face and the kids’ wide eyes, all aimed at him as he burst in on them yesterday. Hope’s face slowly morphed into Christa’s, full of fear and loss, watching him leave home on his way to another run. There were innocents involved. Could he hang them out to dry?

  If he did, Nora’s 10/19 secret would die with her. Luis couldn’t believe it would actually change the election. Still, people had a right to know. They should see who and what their so-called leaders really are.

  You can’t help them if you’re dead.

  The drone’s whine faded into the distance.

  Is it your problem?

  Nora stalked from the front door’s peephole through the kitchen to the door into the garage and back, her pistol’s grip slick with sweat. She’d hardly stopped moving in the nearly five hours since she’d spotted sunlight glinting off binocular lenses in the glassless window across the street. Her head was full of static and conflicting plans and unanswerable questions. Who are they? What are they waiting for?

  The house had become her whole world—a very small, stuffy, dusty world that with every passing hour felt more like a trap. Juan had said he was coming, but that was hours ago. She had no idea if he was still on his way, or if he’d been arrested or killed. He’d also said he was dropping off the network, and that she should, too. She had, and felt marooned.

  Nora jumped at the knock on the door into the garage. She would’ve shot through it if she hadn’t heard Juan’s voice the moment before she squeezed the trigger. “Nora? You in there?”

  Juan’s face was flushed even in the bluish light of the LED lantern in the living room, and his breathing was heavy. “There’s a drone on you,” he panted.

  Nora sighed. “What kind?”

  “Tactical, a quad-rotor. I had to wait it out.”

  It took a full circuit—front door to garage and back—before Nora could calm down enough to speak. “How could this happen? How did they find us?”

  “There was a remote observation post on one of our other safe houses. I checked on the way here. That means they’re probably all blown. Did you go outside?”

  Nora squinted through the peephole for too long, hoping to cover the flush she felt creep into her cheeks. “What do you mean, they’re all blown?”

  “Just that. We have to assume they’re all being watched. Either the FBI or DEA knew about them already, or, well…it’s cartel politics.” He filled the doorway between the entry hall and the kitchen. “Did you go outside?”

  “Explain ‘cartel politics,’” Paul said behind her. Nora glanced back to see him standing in the entry hall, arms crossed, face serious.

  Juan arched an eyebrow at him. “Short version? The Zetas grabbed our capo about a week ago. They’re probably still pumping him dry. Don’t know why they’d be here, though. Still…” He turned back to Nora. “We hav
e three dozen safe houses in San Diego County. But these guys are here in person, which means they saw something. Did you go outside?”

  She wanted to keep ignoring the question, but sensed he wouldn’t stop asking. “Yes.”

  “Mierda.” Juan paced the kitchen, massaging his neck. “What did I tell you about that?”

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m a child!” Nora spat, charging into the kitchen after him. She pulled up sharp, trying but failing to smother her anger. “How are you getting us out of here?”

  “I can’t, not while that thing is up there.” Juan stabbed a finger toward the ceiling. “It’ll follow us wherever we go.” He leveled the finger at Nora. “I told you we have rules here. This is what happens—”

  “We aren’t your prisoners—”

  “Enough!” Paul shouted. Nora and Juan both fell silent. “Corners, both of you.” It was the same tone he used on the kids when they fought.

  Nora shot some of her resentment toward him—don’t you speak to me that way!—but he simply pointed to the corner nearest the sink and glared.

  After a few moments of uneasy silence, Juan asked, “Where are the kids?”

  “In the back bedroom,” Paul said. “All her stomping around with her gun scared them.”

  “This is my fault now?” Nora lunged away from the counter, not knowing where she was going but only that she had to move to burn off her frustration.

  Paul held up his hand to signal “stop”—something else he did with the kids when they were misbehaving, the nerve. “I warned you not to go out there.”

  Nora spun, clunked her pistol on the counter and stood with her back to the room, grinding her fingertips into the sink’s stainless-steel rim, staring at the plywood over the window without seeing it. Her husband was siding with the narco. Perfect.

  “Okay, Juan,” Paul said, sounding far calmer than Nora felt. “What do you want us to do?”

  “There’s nothing we can do. Tomorrow morning we might have a couple minutes when they switch to their daytime drone. Unless they move on us sooner. Until then…” Juan’s boots scraped on the linoleum. “Nora, are these your buddies?”