by Jim Geraghty
Akoman waved. Another man stood behind him, only partially illuminated by the light of the flames.
“Welcome, my friend,” Akoman said.
Jaguar nodded.
“You remember my associate Azi Dhaka,” Akoman said. Jaguar nodded and Akoman offered a bit of a chuckle. “Now you see why I felt quite confident you would have no problem finding this place.”
“This is an amazing place,” Jaguar said, squinting as a wave of heat and a gust of wind brought more sulfur smell.
“They called it the Gates of Hell. Perhaps that is fitting, considering what we will bring to our enemies. Come, we have a tent upwind.”
It was a long walk into the desert to their tent, the light of the flame crater behind them, seeming to head into pitch black, the dry, salty sand crunching underneath their feet. Then a tent was opened, revealing light within; Jaguar wondered how his hosts could so easily operate in such complete darkness. Waiting inside was a beautiful woman—well, her eyes seemed beautiful behind the sheer veil. One of the ornate lanterns within the tent had green glass, and for a split second, the woman looked otherworldly, as if her skin were green or scaled. After a moment, Jaguar’s eyes adjusted, and her skin appeared normal, tan, quite beautiful.
“This is Angra Druj,” Akoman said, without further elaboration. She nodded a silent greeting and removed her veil. Jaguar tried not to stare and failed. Jet black hair, dark eyes, full lips—he guessed she was Lebanese. The folds of her robe loosened slightly, revealing she wore something shiny and taut across her curves, so tight she seemed to have been sewn into it. He had not expected his generous Iranian employer to be lounging with a serpentine supermodel.
Once inside the tent, Jaguar’s hosts offered him tea. They discussed their recent travels and went over the details of their recent operations, any potential mistakes or opportunities for their foes to detect them.
“Jaguar, you have proven quite helpful to our endeavors,” Akoman said. “Our efforts will be entering a new stage quite soon. Your assistance will not be forgotten. Besides your financial compensation, we invited you to get a sense of your … other interests and plans. Our mutual friends mentioned you were a man of bold vision.”
Jaguar reacted with pleasant surprise. The only person who had ever asked to hear more about his radical proposal to win the drug war was Esmerelda.
He laid out how he envisioned the cartel “work stoppage” would lead to chaos in America’s cities, and how the US government would be forced to accept an unimpeded drug pipeline to its citizens. Akoman, Azi Dhaka, and Angra Druj listened quietly, smiling, nodding, but never quite giving Jaguar a good sense of what they really thought. When he finished, there was a long moment of awkward silence.
“That,” Akoman finally said, “is brilliant.”
CHAPTER 26
MONDAY, MARCH 22
Within a few hours, the NSA had identified one Google user whose search history matched someone planning a kidnapping of Francis Neuse. A traceroute command identified the IP address. The user had made a fairly good effort to mask his actual location, but his technology was at least one upgrade out of date. (The NSA had already logged the IP address when the user there searched for information about anonymizing services. Yes, if you express interest in hiding your web activity from the National Security Agency, they are automatically alerted to the fact that you don’t want them to know what you’re doing.) Subsequent searches included research into nickel-carbon material, the kind that one would use to build a homemade SCIF that would be impenetrable from the usual forms of electronic surveillance.
The result was that the NSA stated, with ninety-four percent certainty, that the searches about Neuse came from a laptop computer connected to the Internet via a private wireless connection in a fourth-floor luxury condominium in Mexico City, right on the border of the neighborhoods of Coapa and Xochimilco. That was Mexico City’s southern borough, full of relative greenery and not far from an ecological park full of polluted canals.
The condo was registered to Juan Lopez, a self-employed “contractor.” A cursory search of his finances with various banks in Mexican banks found significant resources, nine accounts in separate banks with a little less than $100,000 in each account.
***
By midday, Raquel had begun wondering just what Dee had meant with her hastily scrawled “Had to run to Fort Meade, be back soon” Post-it note on her door, and where Alec was.
The sound of music in the bull pen of cubicles outside her office offered some answers. She emerged from her office and was treated to the sight of Alec and Dee dancing in front of the door to her office, waving around the printed-out documents confirming that “J.C. Lopez,” the figure who had financed and organized the kidnapping of Francis Neuse, was in fact Mexican citizen Juan Lopez.
“I can’t wait to catch this guy,” Raquel deadpanned. “Then we can really punish him by making him watch you dance.”
Both Alec and Dee simply danced more outrageously.
“Even if Juan Lopez is an alias, we now have a passport photo, address, and bank accounts to go with that alias,” Alec beamed. He held up his hand for a high-five. “NSA tracks ’em, CIA whacks ’em.”
Dee left him hanging for a moment, then relented. “I cannot believe I didn’t think of the Google search.” She smacked his hand. They turned to Raquel.
Raquel nodded and smiled. “Spastic dancing aside, this is good work.” She entered her office, and they followed, uninvited. Raquel furrowed her brow and recognized an expectant look in Alec’s eyes.
“What I should do is pass this to Mexico City station and let them begin an effort to track down Juan Lopez, but you’re going to flip out and tell me not to do that, aren’t you, Alec?” Raquel asked.
They finally stopped dancing. Alec closed the door.
“Well, if the alleged mole everybody’s whispering about is in Mexico City station, Juan Lopez is just going to disappear, isn’t he?” Alec asked. “And even if there isn’t a mole in that station, the list of people we can trust down there is short. We’ve both read the NIEs on Mexico.” He was referring to the CIA’s National Intelligence Estimates, comprehensive studies of a country’s interal problems and possible threats. “It’s Cartel-istan, with practically the entire government compromised. The only reason the drug lords haven’t formally taken over is they don’t want the aggravation of trying to run the public pension programs.”
Dee nodded. “I hate to indulge Alec’s usually baseless paranoia, but if you tell Mexico City station, there’s no guarantee they won’t tell someone in the Mexic—”
Raquel held up her hand and put a finger to her mouth, and Alec stopped. Raquel rose from her desk seat, walked to the door and opened it.
Ward was directly behind it.
“Stop trying to eavesdrop and just come in,” she said. She looked beyond him. “Katrina!”
Katrina entered, and the quartet stood before her. Alec excitedly explained how he and Dee had figured out that J.C. Lopez was Juan Lopez, but Katrina interrupted him and put a finger to his mouth. She picked up the printout of the passport photo.
“This is Juan Lopez?” she asked. Dee nodded. Katrina closed her eyes.
“Café Vernunft, Berlin, about two weeks ago,” she said slowly. “I was talking with Rat. This man was sitting two tables down from us.” She tapped the photo. “He was wearing a Fenerbaçhe jacket.”
She opened her eyes again, having concluded her séance with her own memory. Alec grinned madly.
“That’s my girl!” he cheered, pumping his fist in the air. “Just identified the Berlin bomber!” He turned to Raquel, who was folding her arms.
“Let me guess, you want me to send you four to Mexico to find this guy.”
“I wouldn’t mind running into him again,” Katrina said quietly. “He’s got a lot of blood on his hands.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, I’m not going to Mexico!” Dee exclaimed, shaking her head. “Snake Island was bad enough. I belong beh
ind a keyboard.”
Alec nodded. “Dee can help us more back here. But we’re the ones who tracked him down. We found Francis Neuse. We have momentum.”
“Only Katrina speaks Spanish,” Raquel pointed out.
“Yo hablo Espanol!” Alec said indignantly. Dee’s skeptical guffaw didn’t help his case.
“We can be on a flight tomorrow morning. We get into his place, collect everything we can, and then tell Mexico City station and the Mexican government. No worries about them withholding any useful intelligence that way.”
CHAPTER 27
TUESDAY, MARCH 23
Jaguar was relieved to return to Mexico City. After the first night in Turkmenistan, Jaguar half-jokingly wondered if the trio of Akoman, Angra Druj, and Azi Dhaka were some sort of aliens who had read extensively about how to host a human being but had never actually done it before. They were respectful and indisputably generous hosts, but something about them seemed off. The would pause midsentence when speaking, then exchange long looks to each other that seemed to replace spoken communication.
Once the trio elaborated on their ambitious plans, he understood why he was being brought into their confidence. He had been flattered that they hadn’t laughed at his plan to force Americans to submit to the cartels, and he treated their blueprint to shake American society to its core with similar respect. If they pulled it off—and it appeared the American security agencies had barely amounted to a speed bump so far—Akoman and his gang would shove America’s social fabric into a wood chipper. The trio seemed to recognize they were asking him to take a greater risk and kept offering cash incentives to keep his border-crossing services at the ready.
He had returned to his condo and begun unpacking his clothes—including one outfit still stinking of sulfur from the nights by the flaming crater in the desert.
He couldn’t wait to touch Esmerelda again. She was quickly rising in the ranks of the local all-female gang, Las Calaveras, the “sister gang” of Los Craneos. As the Craneos were expanding their power and reach, they had turned to Las Calaveras to manage some of their existing drug-related operations and neighborhood surveillance. But Jaguar had asked her to help oversee his “special project” in São Paulo. She had hated her one visit to the island and left other trusted associates with the skull masks to interrogate and intimidate Neuse.
Esmerelda was on her way back from there, and he found himself feeling impatient. The first time she had visited Brazil, Esmerelda had returned with a Carnival costume and given him a one-woman carnal parade that night. His Turkmenistan trip proved exhausting by the time he finished, and he found the locals cold, prudish, and suspicious. He felt like it had been far too long since he had gazed upon exposed midriffs, short shorts, plunging cleavage, or other examples of fashionable flaunting by Mexico City women that brightened his day.
He had been distracted, picturing Esmerelda in ever more elaborate outfits when his phone buzzed with a text. Ah, finally, Esmerelda!
He checked his phone and immediately swore. The text from Esmerelda read “9999.”
He threw his sulfur-smelling clothes in the closet. He went to a wall safe behind a picture frame and removed a backpack, full of cash of varying currencies, several passports, and two burner phones. He put one of his guns in his back of his pants, hidden by his jacket, and strapped another into his ankle holster. He opened up a foot locker in his closet, removed a gym bag, and hoisted it over his shoulder. Within three minutes, he was out the door, locking it, and heading to the street, unsure if he would ever return to his condo.
He took the stairs, waved to Manuel the condominium doorman, and headed down the street, slowed only slightly by the weight of the backpack and gym bag. To anyone else, Esmerelda’s text looked like an accidental butt-dial. Jaguar knew four nines meant trouble. He headed to their prearranged rendezvous point, a trendily faux-downscale cantina a few blocks away.
***
For as long as she could remember, people told Esmerelda that she was beautiful. It was a blessing early in life, growing up in one of Mexico City’s poorest and roughest neighborhoods, but by her earliest moments of puberty she realized how mixed that blessing could be. Beauty guaranteed a man’s head would turn, but all too often, they had harsh tempers, raised hands, and malevolence in their hearts. She learned to fight at an early age. She had stabbed three men by the time she was sixteen.
Juan the Jaguar was different. Most men she encountered—brutes, thugs, creeps—were painfully simple. Juan had layers. She had seen his public face—ruthless, cold, all-business. In Mexico City’s underworld, full of machismo and boasts and threats, Juan was quiet, using no more words than the moment required. Juan’s reputation demonstrated he could afford to be a gentleman; he didn’t need to brag because his work spoke for itself. Fist, knife, gun—whatever you came at Juan with, he was faster and would leave you bleeding on the floor.
Esmerelda found Juan’s second layer familiar, but hilarious and endearing because it contrasted so completely with the first. Once alone with her, Juan the Jaguar would drop his ruthless, predator-of-the-night pose and offer almost goofy purple-prose poetry about how mad her beauty drove him. Sometimes he would be romantic, sometimes wildly, hilariously perverse. She inevitably laughed at how the man who had earlier in the day ruthlessly strangled a police informant would spend the evening kissing her behind and talking directly to it, talking about how he had spent the afternoon trying to decide if he liked the left cheek or right cheek better.
But what really attracted Esmerelda to Juan was his sense of mission. He had shared his plan for the cartels, his love of Aztec mythology, his sense that the Smoking Mirror had given him a vision of their country restored to power and greatness. She had shared with him her own beliefs, a devotion to Santa Muerte, “Saint Death,” the Saint of Last Resort. Usually depicted as the Virgin of Guadalupe with a skull for a face, Santa Muerte offered her followers protection, blessings, and deliverance of vengeance in exchange for sacrifices—poured alcohol, blown marijuana smoke, blood, and body parts of enemies or those who doubted or rejected her. To many outsiders, the cult of Santa Muerte sounded twisted, but it hadn’t taken long for it to become the fastest growing faith in Mexico, a favorite of cartels and those victimized by them. The Catholic Church denounced the worship of her as heresy, but that had only fueled her curiosity.
Juan the Jaguar said he didn’t partake of Santa Muerte rituals; he thought but didn’t dare tell his love that he saw it as a Catholic perversion of the pure Aztec rituals. But she wondered if Santa Muerte was already protecting him and guiding him.
Some fool had tried to rob Esmerelda and Juan the Jaguar, about a year ago. He emerged from an alley, raised the cheapest, oldest pistol imaginable, but didn’t even have time to demand their money. Neither she nor the assailant saw the knife or where it came from—Juan’s hand rose to the attacker’s neck and suddenly his jugular was spraying, everything turning red. The gun dropped from his hand. He collapsed and stared, wide eyed, wondering how Juan could have had such a knife hidden in a sleeve or pocket. It was only two and a half inches, but its thick, dark, kukri-like curve was perfectly sharp, built for gasp-inducing, intense puncturing power. The tip of the blade worked through the front of his neck like it was nothing.
The attacker was down, dying before him, but Juan wasn’t finished. He didn’t say anything, but Esmerelda could see from the rage in his eyes that he intended to make an example of his attacker. He began hacking away at his chest, turning it to a crimson mess. The last gasp of life left the assailant, eyes still staring at the sky, face frozen in shock, mouth open in a silent scream. Then with his bare hand, Jaguar tore out a chunk of flesh, leaving the heart exposed. Another round of hacking. And then, with witnesses still staring in horror and disbelief, he pried the attacker’s heart out with his knife. He held it up for everyone to see.
No one thought of intervening. No one even dared scream. Residents who had seen fights and beatings and shots fired found Jag
uar’s rough justice horrifying and mesmerizing. He made a full circle, blood dripping from the heart in his hand, staring at the assembled crowd, and almost daring anyone to object. Then he dropped the heart, gave Esmerelda a look, and they made a quick exit from the scene.
They didn’t need to rush. No one dared call the police. It was an hour before a cop saw the body in the street and began the slow process of removing it.
***
Juan sat, nursing his drink in a corner booth of the cantina. He knew that Esmerelda would not send another text. He had taught her that the NSA could catch just about anything typed or spoken into a phone; no matter what trouble had come, she was not to elaborate any key details electronically. The seemingly innocent butt-dial “9999” was their signal for trouble, most likely law enforcement. If police had arrested Esmerelda, he would likely know soon, a discreet message from any of the local and national police he bribed intermittently, or some of his old friends in CISN.
Finally, she entered, wearing a low-cut black top, tight jeans, and boots. He knew she was trying to be subdued—no red lipstick, none of her preferred jewelry, her long black hair pulled back into a ponytail. It didn’t matter much; men’s heads still inevitably turned as she walked through the bar. Juan couldn’t help but chuckle. Her irrepressible sexuality often ruined his efforts to not stand out in a crowd, but her pleasures were too good to pass up.
They removed the batteries from their phones—Juan had heard how the phones could be turned on remotely and used as eavesdropping and recording devices—and she leaned in close. She offered a brief kiss, and Juan swore at their troubles for disrupting what should have been a passionate reunion.
“Terrible news from São Paulo,” she whispered in Spanish. “The Brazilian Navy escorted an American team to the island.”
Jaguar’s face hardened. Up until now, everything had run smoothly, although the imprisonment and intimidation of Neuse seemed to be generating diminishing returns. Neuse’s long history of experimental recreational pharmacology had left him twitchy, eccentric, and unpredictable even before the abduction. Several months of extreme isolation, punctuated with intermittent terrifying death threats by captors in skull masks and the constant threat of fatal snakebites had shaken his sanity like a snow globe.