Lonely Coast

by Jack Hardin

  Ellie watched as the two guards nearest the door were flung backward as a sniper’s bullet caught them both in the forehead. The remaining four at the front hardly had time to react before they too were dropped silently and their bodies tumbled lifeless onto the stairs.

  “Hold,” Arturo said.

  Ellie looked past the Range Rovers to the rear corner of the basilica. The guard posted there was running toward the front, and he was dropped just as the drivers in the second and third Range Rovers flung their doors open, only to be taken out before.

  “The driver at the lead vehicle isn’t getting out,” Ellie said. Probably the smartest guy in the bunch, she thought.

  “Go. We’ll cover you. The man on the west rear corner is out too. Go.”

  Clutching her Glock in both hands, Ellie burst out of the shop, crossed the sidewalk, and ran across the street. She passed directly in front of the lead Range Rover and stared down the driver through his bulletproof windshield as she continued toward the church, her weapon leveled directly on him. He was young, probably no older than twenty, and had the frightened look of a man who had just watched his entire team get summarily executed. Reaching the front steps, Ellie turned her attention to the bodies strewn ahead of her and left the young driver to Arturo’s attention. She started up, taking the steps two-by-two and being careful not to slip on the blood already pooling around the dead men strewn about her.

  A large iron ring hung in the center of both doors. Ellie grabbed the one on the right and pulled. The massive wooden door opened silently—no creak or groan. She stepped inside.

  The basilica was impressive, if not gaudy. A frescoed aisle split the nave, and rows of wooden pews were positioned on either side, facing the altar at the front. Above, at its center, a massive dome rose up, and a necklace of windows adorned its base, acting as skylights and bringing in a bright, golden stream of mid-morning light. A life-sized statue of a saint was positioned in each corner, elevated high on marble pedestals. The upper wall displayed colorful paintings depicting scenes from the Old Testament: Samson carrying the gates of Gaza on his shoulder, Noah building an altar after the ark had come to rest, Esther appearing before Xerxes, Jeremiah praying from his dungeon.

  Baroque architecture with its high and intricately ornate colonnades and curved spaces that made it almost impossible to locate a right angle at all. On both sides, round columns tracked down the floor, all the way to the altar, where a statue of the Virgin stood proudly on display.

  But Ellie hadn’t come for the view.

  Garcia was seated at the end of the fourth pew from the back. Ellie crept silently toward him, her gun trained on him, and slipped into the pew directly behind him. She sat down. Garcia was leaning forward with his head bowed and his hands folded and clasped in front of his forehead. Prayer beads dangled from between his fingers. She waited. Half a minute. One minute. Finally, Garcia lifted his head toward the altar at the front. He sat up.

  “Thank you,” he said in English and without turning around, “for respecting my prayers. What is it that I can do for you?”

  “I need to find El Oso.”

  He smiled. “I have heard that two gringas have been looking for him. Now that you are here, I suppose I can ask you why you are interested in him.”

  “His son bombed a bus in Florida.”

  “The one in Tampa?”

  “Yes.”

  “No...surely you are mistaken. Pavel does not have a son.”

  This was the first time Ellie had heard anyone call Pavel by his given name. “Except that he does,” she replied. “And since I didn’t come all the way out here for the scenery, why don’t you tell me where I can find him?” She had less than three minutes, maybe less, before reinforcements arrived.

  “He was supposed to meet with me and Félix two days ago. Félix was going to let him know that...how should I say it? That he was no longer in need of El Oso’s services.”

  “Félix was going to kill him?”

  “You Americans, you are very intelligent.”

  “So, what,” Ellie said, “you just lost him?”

  “Yes. And Félix, he is not so happy about this fact.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Garcia shrugged. “Then I suppose that we are in a true Mexican standoff.” He chuckled lightly at his own joke.

  “I’m sure you and Félix keep close tabs on the people working for you. Especially if they’ve fallen out of favor. How did he just vanish?”

  “It seems that he had been keeping a secret store of cash. He paid the right people to keep quiet about it. Two of the men we had watching him accepted his bribes and let him slip through our net. Two of the others he killed.”

  Ellie was starting to believe him, and a sick feeling churned in her stomach. Pavel, if he was anything at all, was excellent at disappearing. It was one of the reasons that they had been in Mexico for three days already and had nothing to show for it.

  “Where did he live?”

  “Outside of Fresnillo. He had a small house there.”

  “Where exactly?”

  He recited the address to her, and she repeated it to Hailey, who entered the location into her laptop and checked it against the information they had retrieved from Ernesto’s computer. “Okay…” Hailey said. “The address is owned by a shell company that the cartel owns. It’s not far from here.”

  “You still there, gringa?”

  “Hold on,” Ellie told Garcia.

  “The address has two names associated with it,” Hailey said. “Ask Garcia if they had another name for Petronovich.”

  “The locals call him El Oso,” Ellie said. “What did you and Félix call him?”

  Garcia smiled again. “Jose Blanco.”

  “Joe White?” Ellie nearly smiled herself.

  “That’s the name,” Hailey said. “The address has a Jose Blanco associated with it.”

  Arturo’s voice came through, calm but urgent. “Two SUVs turning into the square. O’Conner. You need to leave. Back door. Now.”

  “Thank you for your help,” Ellie said to Garcia, and then she brought her handgun up and cracked it across the back of his skull. His head whipped unnaturally to the side, and his body slumped and fell limply onto the pew. Arturo had given her a slim plastic container the size of a travel toothbrush holder. She pulled off the top and withdrew the syringe. The clear liquid was a variant on benzodiazepine family that would extend Garcia’s mid-morning nap until early afternoon. The last thing they needed was for him to wake and tell his people that he had sent his accoster to Pavel’s last known address.

  Ellie pressed gently on the plunger and when a couple of drops fell off the tip of the needle, she stood up and leaned over Garcia’s body. She stabbed it hard into his shoulder and pressed firmly on the plunger. When he woke, the area around the insertion point would be bruised and extremely painful. And to Ellie, that was all the better. She returned the needle to its case and slipped it into her pocket. Grabbing her gun, she moved toward the inner west wall of the building and headed quickly to the back.

  “Two are coming around,” Arturo said. “We don’t have a shot.”

  There was a single door in the back, and after moving past the altar, Ellie located a wide hallway and stopped ten feet from the door. She stepped to the side and waited. Garcia’s men would have no way to know if their leader was still alive. They would come in hard and fast.

  The door flung open, and light poured in the dimly lit hallway as a large man charged into the church. Ellie squeezed off three rounds and dropped him. His left foot was still hanging over the threshold, keeping the door from shutting cleanly.

  Men yelled just outside. Ellie’s adrenaline was pumping hard, and before she could consider her next move, the door was flung open and a hail of bullets scattered across the wall just in front of her as the men outside tried to clear a safe path inside. Ellie had no choice but to retreat, and she shouldered open the door to a janitor’s closet and ducked just
before she was cut down by another barrage of gunfire.

  The closet had a metal shelf bolted into the wall, just next to the door. Ellie scrambled blindly up to the fourth and top shelf. It was empty and she stood up, pressed her back against the wall, and aimed her weapon at the door. She waited. Urgent voices, muffled slightly through the door, came toward her position. Someone ran past, and then another. Loud echoes came from inside the nave as they searched for their leader.

  “How many came to the back?” Ellie whispered to Arturo.

  “Five.”

  Two had passed. One was dead in the doorway. That left two more.

  “Two more vehicles, Ellie. You need to get out of there.”

  She was just about to climb down when the door to the closet cracked open and a man dressed like all the rest trained his rifle inside. Ellie fired down on him, and he dropped to the floor, all three rounds hitting him in the neck and face. She jumped to the floor and, after a brief glance down the hall, sent her Glock home to its holster at her side before snatching up the man’s assault rifle and clearing the hallway.

  Fast footsteps echoed in the nave, heading for her position. She waited, and as soon as she saw him appear in the hallway, she opened fire. He dropped, and she burst from the closet and toward the back door.

  “I’m at the back,” Ellie said.

  “Antonio just repositioned,” Arturo said. “You’re clear.”

  She stepped over the man’s body still in the doorway and opened the door. She quickly checked the open space and cleared the side of the building to her right before swiveling left and checking the corner. She backed up toward the street and kept her focus on the building in front of her, watching the doorway from which she had just emerged and keeping an observant eye on the corner. She backed into the street and had just turned to flee when a bullet grazed her shirt sleeve, zipping past and making the hair on the back of her neck stand up as she sped down an alley into cover.

  “You’re clear,” Arturo said. “Turn down the next street on your left. The Tahoe is there.” She followed his direction and was relieved to see Hailey waiting in the driver’s seat. Ellie jumped in and barely had her door shut before Hailey punched the pedal and sped down the street.

  “I see you got a new gun,” Hailey said. “A friend give that to you?”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Tyler followed Carl from a reasonable distance.

  Reticle was situated at the southwest corner of Yucca Penns Preserve, just two miles from the Gulf of Mexico lining Florida’s western edge, and for the first several miles they moved further inland as Carl made his way east. Tyler kept the blue Subaru a small dot in his windshield as they took the rural road out of Lee County and into Hendry County. He drew closer as they approached State Road 31 and then hung back a hundred years as they headed north.

  Katie’s face, and the way she clutched her hand over her ribcage as she walked, kept running through his mind. He had hardly slept last night, finally getting up at four and sitting on his back deck to try to clear his mind.

  Katie was right; it wasn’t as easy as just calling the cops. Tyler recalled a scenario back from when he lived in Texas. A local woman had gone to the authorities after a similar situation had taken place. Her boyfriend had assaulted her as she was walking across her yard to check the mail, and he left her a tattered mess. He threatened her not to get the cops involved. But as soon as he left, and she was able to drag herself across the yard to where he had thrown her phone, she called it in. The boyfriend was arrested, booked, and had no money to post bail. But his threats rang true when, two days later, she was found dead on her couch. Two slugs in her chest. Tyler knew that Carl’s threat might be as idle as a parked car, but he wasn’t willing to bet on it.

  A truck pulled out in front of Tyler, creating a visual buffer between him and Carl as they continued moving away from the coast and into the quiet of the country. They put five more miles of road beneath them before the Subaru turned south onto an asphalt road, where the pines and oaks began to grow thicker and country homes appeared less frequently.

  Tyler fell back as Carl cut down another road and turned just in time to see him turn again. The occasional home appeared on his right, and Tyler watched the Subaru’s brake lights flash just before it turned into a dirt driveway and nearly disappeared into a jungle of high grasses and weeds. Tyler pulled off along the shoulder and retrieved a pair of field glasses from his console. He watched as Carl pulled up to a mobile home, got out of his car, and stretched.

  Tyler could feel a hot coal of anger building inside his chest.

  Carl went up the front steps and disappeared inside. Tyler saw no other vehicles besides the Subaru.

  “Gotcha,” Tyler said out loud. He returned the binoculars to the console and flipped a U-turn, heading back to State Road 31. His jaw set tight as he saw Carl’s worn knuckles in his mind. He gripped the steering wheel until all the blood evacuated his knuckles. Before long, he was thinking about how to do it. Where to do it. What he might do with the body and how best to construct an alibi.

  It wouldn’t be that hard.

  A large pickup towing an empty horse trailer flew by, taking up nearly all of the other side of the road and rolling up onto the double line. It roared past, interrupting Tyler’s train of thought and bringing him back to the present.

  He shook his head and ran a hand through his hair, then rolled down the windows to clear his mind. He was almost ashamed for seriously contemplating something like that.

  Almost.

  And soon he was gladly entertaining the idea again, all the way back to the range.

  The water glistened before Nico like a mirage, laid out like a shimmering sheet of satin. He could hardly believe it was real. After six hours of anxious travel, they had finally made it to the coast, to the Gulf, to La Pesca. He lifted his face to the sun and felt a cool breeze such as he could never hope in feel in the rugged deserts further inland. This was something he could get used to. And if the Virgin of Guadalupe was on his side, he would.

  The truck honked impatiently from behind him, and he jogged back to it. Carlos was already using his crowbar and hammer to pry away the makeshift crate they had built. Nico opened the back door, took out a hammer and crowbar of his own, and got to work.

  Carlos’s crew had been working out here for the better part of three weeks, dredging a hidden section of the river’s delta, filling in dirt for a temporary road and entry ramp, and building a short dock that they camouflaged with paint and loose brush.

  Within half an hour, he and Carlos had everything stripped away, and they stepped away as the driver slowly backed up toward the water.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The location Garcia had given them belonged to a narrow adobe hut set among dozens of similar buildings. There were no yards, no real streets. Just a large cluster of run-down and poor homes. Ellie was almost certain they had the wrong address. As if reading her mind, Hailey opened her laptop and double-checked the address against the GPS.

  “This is it,” she said.

  They stepped out and brought out their sidearms as they approached the home. The wooden door was sunbleached, scarred with hundreds of nicks and scratches showing years of hard wear.

  Hailey stepped to the side to cover Ellie as her partner tried the door handle. It was unlocked, and the door swung inward. Ellie swooped inside, training her gun around a space that was almost entirely… empty. She cursed and ran a hand down her face. They had reached the end of the line. Hailey came in behind her and sighed.

  The ceiling was low, but it was cool inside the mud home. The floor, like the ground outside, was naked and bare. A sink stood in the far corner and a bed in another. A small table with two chairs rounded out the home’s contents. There were no shelves, no couch, no other rooms.

  “We should check the neighboring homes,” Hailey said. “Maybe the address is misleading by a few numbers.”

  “Maybe,” Ellie said doubtfully. Th
ey went back out into the sunlight and saw a young boy running toward them. He looked no older than ten and was wearing threadbare cotton shorts and no shirt or shoes. He stopped in front of them and spoke excitedly in Spanish. Ellie could only pick out a few words. Hailey translated.

  “El Oso. He said to give you this when you came.”

  The boy held out a white envelope, smudged with dirt. Ellie took it. “Who exactly did he say to give this to?”

  “El Oso said that the Americans would be coming. American police. He paid me a lot of money,” the boy went on. “I gave it to my mother. El Oso said that if you came and I did not see you, or if I did not give this to you, then he would come back and kill my mother.”

  “That sounds about right,” Ellie said under her breath.

  Hailey looked to her partner. “He was expecting us.” It wasn’t a question. The boy was starting to stir uncomfortably, as though he had done his job and was ready to leave. “How long ago did he give you this?” Hailey asked him.

  He shrugged. “Three days. He left the next morning.” He motioned toward a community water pump standing a few yards away and then to an empty area beyond it. “I was getting water for my mother, and I saw El Oso kill two men sitting in a car, right over there.

  Ellie recalled what Garcia had told her about Pavel. How he had failed to show to the meeting with Felix and how he had killed two men Garcia had left watching him.

  Before they could ask him anything else, the boy ran off, his feet stirring up puffs of dry red dirt behind him. He darted around a hut and was gone as quickly as he had come.

  Ellie turned her attention to the envelope. She wiggled a nail under the edge of the back flap and ran it across. She pried it open and pulled out a single slip of paper. Sitting at the bottom of the envelope was a USB drive. Ellie handed the envelope to Hailey and unfolded the paper. It was a letter. English, and written in clear, legible handwriting.

  To the United States Government: