This was a flat statement of fact with no possibility of appeal. Nora could think of better places to be stranded than in this shell of a house on a scorched hillside, but it wasn’t up to her anymore. “I understand. You’re Bel?”
“Yeah. Mirabel, really, but Bel works. You must be Nora.”
“I am. And this—” she patted Hope’s back “—is Hope. You’ve met my husband.”
“And your boy, too. So, you’re the people he’s taking to Mexico.”
“Yes, if we can get there.” Nora checked that Hope was still asleep. “You know, the cartel rep back in D.C. said this would be ‘routine.’ I wasn’t expecting anything like this.” She tried to meet Bel’s eyes, but couldn’t. “I guess you don’t really care about that.”
Bel shrugged. “Sometimes it’s nice just to say it out loud.” Her tone was gentler than Nora thought she deserved. Bel’s focus rarely left Hope.
Nora scooted to the end of the planter, then patted the open spot. Bel perched on the edge and watched Hope sleep. The moonlight revealed a sadness Nora hadn’t expected.
“She’s darling,” Bel said. “She reminds me of Christa, our daughter, at that age. She’s what, four? Five?”
“Four. Juan mentioned—”
“Juan?”
“Your husband?”
Bel chuckled. “His name’s Luis, I don’t know where ‘Juan’ came from.” Her hand drifted to her mouth. “Um. I wasn’t supposed to tell you that, was I? Oh, to hell with it.” She gazed at Hope some more, sighed. “Lucho told me about your husband getting blacklisted. I’m so sorry.”
Juan—er, Luis—hadn’t told her about 10/19. Good man. “It’s not your fault.”
“Someone has to apologize. God, I sound like Lucho. ‘It’s the right thing to do, someone has to do it,’ all that. He always has to fix everything. He always needs to help.” Her voice was wistful, not bitter or complaining, which Nora would’ve expected.
“You’re a nurse. Isn’t that what you do every day?”
Bel snorted. “I wish.” She stared at her kneecaps. “Truth is, I’m just a traffic cop. I herd people through the ED. They either come out just as sick as they were before, or they get better but the bills keep them broke for the rest of their lives. Either way, they’re screwed.”
“You can’t mean that.” Nora touched Bel’s arm for comfort…whose, she couldn’t say.
Bel nodded. “On the other hand, my darling husband in there gets himself shot saving people he doesn’t know. People like you.” She scrubbed her face with her palms. “Listen to me. I’m tired and I’m whining. I hate that. Look, please don’t get him killed, okay?”
The plea in Bel’s face raised a knot in Nora’s throat that went down hard. “That’s my plan. Nobody dies.”
“Good.” Bel watched Hope with eyes filled with remembered pain. After a few moments, she stroked Hope’s hair, which Nora normally wouldn’t allow but in this case felt like the least she could do. Bel stood, brushed off the seat of her pants, then wrapped her arms around herself again. “Keep them safe. Get across. Have a good life. Somebody’s gotta come out ahead.” She turned and left before Nora could say goodbye.
39
Born out of the events of 9/11 and expanded after the 10/19 atrocity, the TSC maintains the U.S. government’s consolidated Terrorist Watchlist—a single database of identifying information about those known or reasonably suspected of being involved in terrorist activity. The Watchlist now contains the names of over nine million suspected terrorists and their supporters.
— “Terrorist Screening Center,” FBI.gov
FRIDAY, 14 MAY
McGinley spent a couple days on JTF’s dime hunting down whatever he could find on Cordero “El Vendedor” Alcala, the Zeta logistics weenie the whorehouse manager ratted out at the mine on Wednesday.
He dug up some dirt that was interesting enough—the man apparently had two wives, one in Monterrey, one in Nogales—but not so useful in finding the sumbitch. The CIA said he worked out of the back of an up-armored SUV. Gennaro’s crew in El Paso had the usual background intel (ex-Mexican Army, gun-runner, blah blah blah), but the last time anyone had a fix on the man was two months ago. Lots of dope on him moving truckloads of weapons over the border from Texas and Arizona, but only one mention of whores.
Damn good security for a loggie.
The other thing that chapped McGinley’s hide was finding out that no one was after Alcala. True, he reckoned that Los Manosos—the Zeta supply group—was piddly stuff compared to the people wiping out whole villages at a time or running bargeloads of zip into Corpus Christi. Still, someone should want to nail the bastard.
Maybe it was McGinley’s job now.
He’d added Alcala’s name to his shitbag file and started working the phone to see what wasn’t out on the official wikis. Someone somewhere might have a hard-on for Alcala. Maybe he’d stolen someone else’s wife the way he had Carla Jean. All he needed was to find that one other sad sack like himself with that one extra piece of intel to find his way to that Zeta fucker’s front door.
McGinley thought he’d escaped clean from the Friday-morning coordination meeting—nothing more than a bunch of pecker-waving by people who hadn’t left the damn building all week—until he heard Jorgensen’s voice yell, “Mac! Wait up!”
Poster Boy was so pleased with his world he positively glowed. “You’ve got a snitch called Ojeda, right?”
“That’s right. What about it?”
“He’s hooked up with Nura al-Khaled.”
McGinley stood there chewing on his tongue, trying not to look like a sheep hit by a mallet before its throat’s cut. “Where’d you hear that?”
“Need to know, Mac, but it’s solid. Did he tell you anything about that? I’m guessing not.”
Well, damn. If the Feebs weren’t blowing smoke—which was always possible—Ojeda not only managed to get his old job back with the Cartel already, but he’d scored big his first time out. Of course, the dumb bastard should’ve told McGinley as soon as the deal was done, and it pissed McGinley off to find out this way. “I haven’t talked to that ol’ boy today. Giving him some room to run, don’t you know. So, when I go see him—” which he would as soon as he could figure out what the hell was going on “—what else do you know, so I can hit him with it?”
“Only that he’s been working it a couple weeks. He’s supposed to get her across the border with her family. Apparently some big bucks in it for him.”
A couple weeks? Ojeda had some explaining to do.
“Anyway,” Jorgensen went on, “just so you know, we’re on him now. We’ll lay on full blanket surveillance. We’ll bust him when he meets up with Khaled. But I was thinking…”
“That I could talk him into rolling over on her, am I right?” And make the Feebs’ jobs easier and cheaper, which they always liked. Jorgensen’s smile told him all he needed to know. “Why don’t all y’all just give him half that reward you got on her now? Five million makes people real flexible.”
“You don’t think we’re really going to pay that reward to anyone, do you?”
Just like the Feebs to pull that scam. “Well, then, I got me a couple requests.”
“Such as?”
“What do you have on Jorge Casillas?”
Jorgensen raised a hand to signal “stop.” “Don’t go there, Mac.”
“All right, then. I want the national security letter on Khaled. It–”
“How do you know there is one?”
“Because this here’s a terrorism beef, so what else’s it gonna be?”
“Forget it, it’s classified.”
“Don’t you shovel that bullshit on me, son.” McGinley pointed at Poster Boy’s perfect nose. “I have just as good a clearance as you. If you want me to get Ojeda to flip on Khaled, I need to know more about her than he does, which I reckon ain’t much. I got the notion Ojeda’s sweet on the rags but not necessarily on terrorists, because, see, he thinks there’s a difference.
If I can show him what she’s up to, well…you catch my drift, right?”
“Jesus.” Jorgensen scratched the scar under his chin. “All right, let me make some calls. You might have to get read in, it could take a day or two. I’ll see what I can do.” He shook his finger at McGinley. “I do this, you better come through, understand?”
McGinley would’ve liked to break off that finger. “Like you have with Casillas?”
McGinley drained the afternoon’s third Dr. Pepper, put his feet up on his open desk drawer, and thought on the big shit-slick opportunity Jorgensen had dumped on him.
He’d soaked up everything he could find on this Khaled woman in open-source and on the various wikis. If she was a genuine terrorist—with the Feebs, it was hard telling—and Ojeda really was tangled up with her, then McGinley had a shot at grabbing some glory for ICE and some goodwill for himself at the same time. Ojeda was his asset, after all. If McGinley could get to the rag through him, a lot of people in big offices back at Homeland Security would think McGinley was the best thing on two legs. He might maybe get back home and get some help burning the Zetas. Maybe someone could put the screws to the Mexes for some help finding Carla Jean, or turning over the rock that Alcala sumbitch was under. He’d spend any points he got from bringing in Khaled for that kind of action, no doubt.
But first he had to drag Ojeda back into the corral, and soon. If the Bureau had “full blanket surveillance” on Ojeda, McGinley had a real small window to act. He had to beat the Feebs to Khaled.
40
The TLPA/McKinsey study estimates a minimum of 2.1 million three-wheeled auto-rickshaws (tuk-tuks) in operation across the U.S., a thousand-fold increase in the past ten years as budget cuts have shut down city bus services. Less than 1% are registered or insured, and each one drives down the rates traditional taxicab operators can charge, threatening their livelihoods.
— “Third-World ‘Cabs’: the Growing Threat,” Taxicab, Limousine and Paratransit Association
FRIDAY, 14 MAY
Luis sprawled on his bed and drifted. He’d done that a lot since Wednesday night. Everything from his hips up throbbed as if someone had gone over him with a baseball bat. The nerves in his left shoulder sizzled. Bel had told him to get up and walk once in a while so he wouldn’t lock up, but moving too fast made him dizzy. So he ate codeine-reinforced Tylenol like M&Ms and floated.
The ghosts of the two men he’d killed in El Cajon glared at him while he was awake. When he slept, they merged into a running loop of weird nightmares that dredged up things he’d tried to not think about for twenty years. None of it was restful. The drugs only made it worse.
He’d just jolted out of another bad mental movie when he heard the gentle tap on the door. “A man wants to see you,” Alvaro wheezed in Spanish. “He’s a policía, I think.”
“Tell him to go away.”
“I did. He won’t go.”
Luis shuffled to the front door, trying not to move in any of the few dozen ways that hurt. He wasn’t surprised to find McGinley waiting for him. “What do you want?”
McGinley crossed his arms and shook his head. “You are one sorry-looking hombre.”
“I’m sick.”
“Y’all are gonna feel worse after we’re done, Ojeda. Me and you need to take a ride.”
Luis tried to wake himself up enough to process this, but only made the pounding worse. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“This ain’t a request.” McGinley draped his hand over his holstered pistol. “Besides, I guarantee you don’t want to talk here.”
Outside, the Neighborhood Watch guys stopped shoveling gravel out of a pickup into a pothole to watch Luis stagger out to McGinley’s medium-gray Santana. McGinley drove out of the neighborhood as if he was trying to escape the hill fire. Once they hit the low-rise suburbia of Fairhaven Avenue, he slowed so the road hammering wouldn’t destroy both their spines.
“Remember that pow-wow we had last Monday?” McGinley growled. “The one where I told you I’d kill your job and throw your pretty wife out of the country and put the old folks in a camp if you fucked with me? Well, you need to think on that right quick, ‘cause you have fucked up more ways’n I can count.”
How’d he find out? “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
McGinley tsked and shook his head again. Then, without warning, his right fist backhanded Luis just below his ribs.
The Disneyland fireworks show filled Luis’ eyes. He jerked forward to double over, but the seat belt’s shoulder harness caught him short and snapped against the bruises McGinley hadn’t hit. Luis hung there, half bent, coughing and gagging as he fought to catch a breath.
“Let’s try this again. Tell me about Nura al-Khaled.” Luis lost the lungful of air he’d managed to claw down. “I never reckoned you for a traitor, Ojeda. It’s one thing to move all them women and kids and old folks around, that’s almost touching. But a real live terrorist? I’m disappointed in you.”
How did he find out? How much did he know? Luis used his breathing problem for cover as he tried to figure out what to say. He wasn’t in any condition to get smacked around.
“I’m waitin’.”
Luis finally sat up straight. “Is this ride so you can dump me in the landfill?”
McGinley laughed. “Amigo, I don’t gotta dump your body. I can just shoot you while escaping.” He stopped at the light on Grand just south of I-5, and the car was swarmed by ragged little kids trying to sell mints and paper flowers. They scattered when he flashed his badge. “This ride is so our friends in the FBI don’t listen in.” He glanced at Luis, probably seeing the shock. “Oh, yeah. They know about you and al-Khaled. I reckon they already climbed so far up your asshole you can’t feel ‘em no more.”
Ay, chingado. Luis remembered what Nora had told him—blanket wiretaps, drones, super-SWAT teams. If McGinley was right, it was “game over.” They might already have Nora, or they’d have her soon; then they’d come for him. The Cartel might pay for a lawyer assuming any of this got to a courtroom six or seven years from now. In the meantime, he’d be an old man in some jungle of a prison, getting older fast. “They on Bel too?”
“I reckon so, just to be thorough. When they get a mind to, the Feebs just go to town. That’s the upside of working for the last civilian Federal agency with any money.”
“How long?”
“Well, I just found out this morning, but I ain’t first on their mailing list, if you know what I mean.” He stopped to let a mixed group of Latino women and kids—faces half-covered by grubby surgical masks—cross the road on their way to a street market set up in front of a dead gas station. “Let me tell you how this works. It can go two ways. One way is you keep being cute with me, and the Feebs bust you and your new girlfriend and put you in some military prison somewhere and forget about you, and your wife goes in a camp because she must be in on it, and maybe your son gets bounced from the Marines, and your folks end up living in a tent. How’s that sound to you?”
Luis worked hard to keep his face blank even though his heart was about to seize up. This tonto wanted him to lose it. Luis wouldn’t give him the pleasure. “They don’t even do that kind of shit in Russia anymore.”
“Maybe not. The other way—you’ll like this better—is you tell me where al-Khaled is, and I bust her, and since you’re my CI and you led me to her, you get off with maybe a couple days in holding just to make it look good, and you retire and you and your pretty wife and your folks get to live your lives in peace.”
“Until the Cartel kills me for being a snitch. What do you get out of Option Two?”
McGinley smiled, that predator smile Luis last saw at the ID check. “I get to put a genuine terrorist in a cage. ICE gets more money in the next budget, which means maybe I get a raise. And I get to cornhole the Bureau, which I just love to do, ‘cause them arrogant sumbitches are always in my chili playing ‘I’ve Got a Secret’ and I can’t tell you how irritating that is.”
Option Two sounded a lot better than the first one, except for the part about the Cartel feeding him to the sharks, and that he didn’t believe McGinley would let him go so easily. And the part about giving up Nora. But since this cracker was talking about options, the Feds didn’t have her yet. Luis might have some room to bargain, keep himself and his family out of jail.
“One problem,” Luis said. He tried to find a way to sit that didn’t hurt and kept his face turned away from McGinley. He watched the busy sidewalk as the car nosed through the tuk-tuks and pedicabs jamming Fourth Street in Santa Ana’s Latino business district. “Someone else already made a play for her. Not the FBI.”
“Who?”
“Not sure. They sent two teams of contractors to hit a safe house in El Cajon. The first team was going for a capture. No shooting until the people inside started shooting back. The second team was in full kill-them-all mode.”
“You ain’t got nothing to do with all this, right?”
“Just telling you what I know.”
“What makes you so sure they were contractors?”
“They didn’t wear uniforms and they carried no IDs. That’s how I figure they’re not FBI or any of your other friends.”
McGinley chewed this over for a few moments. “Reckon they were cartel?”
“That’s my guess.” Not that Luis needed to think about Zetas again—ever—but they were popping up too much lately. “The first six were Anglos and didn’t have Zeta tats. That’s why I’m saying contractors and not sicarios. They’re trying to keep it at arm’s length.”
“And it ain’t your boys because, well, why bother? They already got you.”
“Yeah. Where’d the FBI get their information about Nora?” Luis winced the moment he said her first name and not her last.
McGinley raised an eyebrow at him. “‘Nora,’ is it? Well. I don’t know where the Feebs got their intel, but since y’all are first-name buddies and all, maybe it’s true.” He threaded through the northbound traffic on Main, heading away from downtown and La Paloma into patchy low-rise commercial buildings and a blight of vidboards, pawn shops, tire- and slate-rental stores and payday lenders. The gold late-afternoon light didn’t make the area any more attractive. “Do you know a Jorge Casillas?”
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