by Jack Slater
In Mexico, maybe – but not in America. That was the unwritten rule, everybody knew that. Ramon had assured her that she would be safe here. That the men he’d assigned to protect her were simply there as a precaution.
Her assailants—there were four of them, at least that she could see—began approaching the store. The two on the flanks remained upright to cover their partners as the other two bent to check pulses and kick away fallen weapons. A knife appeared in the gloved hand of one of the crouching men, and swiftly filleted the neck of one of her former protectors. A pump of blood gushed out, and then a second, but already the flow was weaker, and then it stopped entirely.
The killer wiped the knife on her bodyguard’s suit and then returned it to a khaki sheath attached to his belt. It seemed that the rest of Ramon’s men were already dead, for the act was not repeated.
“Policia!” Jennifer started to scream, her mind surfacing a memory of her bodyguards pointing out the car sent by the DEA as they’d parked. She’d laughed then. Not now.
“Police, help!”
But no one came.
Are they already dead? Jennifer wondered abstractly. That did not compute either. No one killed DEA agents. Local cops, maybe. Both sides treated that as a cost of doing business. But federal agents were off limits. Killing them brought too much political heat, and political heat was usually doused in fire and blood.
It struck her as strangely discordant that while one of the gunmen walked through the space that the shattered glass had previously occupied, his boots crunching against the broken shards, the rest came through the door. The first held it open as the others entered. She thought she even heard a murmur of thanks.
Jennifer called out for the police one last time, more in vain hope than any sense of expectation. But her voice died even in the safety of her own throat.
She thought she saw one of the men smirk at her screams as he walked toward her, some form of rifle in his hands. His finger was off the trigger, resting on the side of the gun. Not like Ramon’s sicarios. But a balaclava obscured his features.
“What do you want?” Jennifer said, mustering the strength to speak for the first time. She glanced behind her and saw that both Silvia and Adriana were white with fear. She beckoned them to shelter behind her.
You can save them, she knew. These men were here for her, not them.
The store assistants were sheltering behind the cash registers, she saw as she returned her attention to the man approaching her. She took a half step to the left, toward them, and held her breath in the hope that her friends would follow her lead.
Jennifer swallowed and tried again. “Whatever it is, you will get it. I promise you. Just don’t hurt anyone else.”
The man remained silent. His weapon did not waver. She noticed that, too. It was entirely still, as though his frame was carved from marble. It just hovered in midair, aimed at a spot half a foot to her side.
But not at her.
You don’t point your gun at something unless you’re prepared to kill it.
Ramon’s words echoed in her head. He’d told her that. The thought emboldened Jennifer. These men were professionals; that much was evident by the mere fact that all four of her bodyguards had been gunned down without firing so much as a shot in return.
And professionals didn’t kill for fun. They didn’t slaughter innocent women.
Did they?
The gunman lowered his weapon slightly and pointed a gloved finger from his free hand at Jennifer’s chest. The appendage rotated slowly in midair, and just as deliberately, he beckoned her toward him.
Jennifer released a breath she wasn’t aware she’d been holding. Okay. This was a start. They were communicating, at least, and that was better than shooting. This was business. They would hold her for a few days, and then Ramon would pay a ransom, and it would all be a bad memory.
So she complied. Only with a single step at first, and then another, as the man opposite her did not react, and she slowly grew in confidence until they were face to face. So close that she could reach out and touch him if she so chose.
Though she did not.
The man spoke quietly. “Señorita Reyes. I need you to come with us.”
Jennifer didn’t notice the man behind him raising his weapon. She didn’t see his finger sliding from the side of the rifle onto its trigger. But she heard the weapon’s retort. Her head spun, and she saw Silvia’s body on the floor, unmoving.
The weapon fired again.
And Jennifer Reyes screamed.
5
The intercom on the Resolute Desk buzzed, jolting President Charles Nash from a momentary daydream as he gazed out onto the South Lawn of the White House.
“Administrator Engel is here for your 11 o’clock, Mr. President.”
Nash shook himself awake, turned, and pressed his finger on the intercom’s transmit button. “Thanks, Karen. You can send him in.”
The president had long ago ceased his previously frequent attempts to get his office gatekeeper to refer to him by his given name, rather than the title of his office. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about it. There were, of course, advantages to the pomp and pageantry of the Oval Office. You couldn’t underestimate the effect the trappings of power had on those who came to him, hands outstretched.
It wasn’t any one piece of the picture, not the bust of Winston Churchill, the Secret Service detail or the Marine sergeant standing on the patio in full dress uniform, but the way each blended together, in the process producing an effect that on rare occasions could even still a visitor’s tongue.
Even for those less overtly affected by the pomp and ceremony and history, the impact tended to give the man in his chair the upper hand in negotiations, which the man in his chair was expected to undertake frequently.
A side door opened silently, and the imposing frame of a member of his detail briefly hove into view before Administrator Engel strode into the room, attaché case in his right hand. Nash couldn’t help thinking that the man looked impossibly young. He was in his late forties, not that much younger than the president himself, when it came down to brass tacks. But age and stress had not yet wearied him.
That’ll come, he thought dryly.
Nash watched as Engel’s eyes pirouetted around the Oval Office in search of him, first passing across the windows that overlooked the greenery outside and seeming to slow before they alighted upon him.
“You like the view?”
“I could get used to it,” Engel replied as he walked toward the desk before blanching as he realized precisely what he’d said. “Not, of course, that I intend to.”
“Be my guest,” Nash laughed. “I could use a nice long vacation, anyway. And maybe you would do a better job. Most people think they can.”
“I doubt that, sir,” Engel said, taking his boss’ lead and smiling, though a hint of anxiety remained. “I have my hands full as it is.”
Nash nodded to indicate he understood. “How’s business, Mark?”
“The job title’s accurate, that’s all I’ll say,” Engel replied, his nerves visibly fading as the two men returned to safer ground. “Paperwork keeps building up, and all I seem to do these days is administrate.”
“It’d make a better name for a wrestler, wouldn’t it?” Nash mused, wondering indeed why it was that the DEA didn’t rate a director. Probably politics back in the seventies, he figured. Herbert Hoover was nothing if not a jealous man, covetous of his fiefdom, and those who succeeded him were made in the same mold, if not quite so obvious about it. Though Rutger wasn’t too bad. As these things went.
“That it might, sir,” Engel agreed.
He gestured his guest toward the two sofas on the opposite side of the office. “And the kids?”
Engel’s face lit up, and he did a delicate dance to switch his briefcase to his free hand so that he could retrieve a cell phone, which he waggled in the president’s direction. “Doing real well, sir. Only thing is they grow up too fast. I�
��d show you some pics, but the security pukes locked this thing down harder than Fort Knox.”
“Maybe next time.” Nash smiled, hiding a pang of regret of his own as he remembered George at that age before the world caught up and then passed his son by. He followed the administrator to the sofa and sat down, rightly guessing that his subordinate was waiting for him to do just that.
“Can I get you anything to drink?”
“No sir,” Engel said with a quick shake of the head. “I know you’re busy, so I’ll keep this quick. We’ve basically got two major items on the agenda. I figured you’d want to know about both.”
“Carreon’s extradition?”
“Yes sir,” the administrator agreed. “That’s one of them. Leo, my chief of staff, just filled me in on the latest. Sounds like the Mexicans are giving Justice a hard time, but that’s the ballgame. We’ll get it done. It’s just a matter of trade-offs now: who gets what, when, where. And how, of course. Can’t forget the paperwork.”
Nash grimaced. “Fine. Keep me posted. Whatever it costs, I want it done. The American people deserve to see this guy in the dock, and I intend to see that happen. So what’s the other thing?”
“Understood, Mr. President,” came the reply as Engel looked away, searching inside his case for a pair of identical manila folders which he pulled out. “I don’t think it’ll be too long now, anyway.”
He handed one of the files to the president and kept the other for himself. “This is Operation Wishbone. I don’t pick the names. That’s the computer’s job.”
Nash rolled his eyes knowingly. With over a year of the job under his belt, he’d come to learn that the more banal the name choice, the more interesting the activity – and this one was positively stultifying. “Excuses, excuses… So what is it?”
The administrator opened his copy of the file and revealed a glossy full-page image of a Hispanic male whom the president did not recognize. It was a grainy shot and looked as though it had been taken mid-stride as the subject was looking down at the ground. He still had a full head of hair, though it was beginning to gray.
“This is Ramon Reyes, Mr. President,” Engel remarked, tapping the page. “Otherwise known as El Toro.”
“Who came up with that, I wonder?” Nash muttered, glancing back up. “El Toro,” he repeated, rolling the R on his tongue in piratical fashion. “The bull. I like that. Real masculine. Better than mine, anyway. You know, my detail has taken to calling me Gaslamp. Never asked why.”
“Has a ring to it, I guess.”
Nash waved his hand. “Anyway, go on. Shouldn’t have interrupted you.”
“No problem. Anyway, Reyes – he’s the leader of the Crusaders cartel. Cruzados, in Spanish. They control most of the southern half of Mexico. Used to be at war with the Federation up in Sinaloa, but that’s calmed down over the last couple of years.”
“Why do they call him the bull?”
“Far as we know, he was a novillero, a trainee bullfighter. Went to a training academy three days a week from the age of six.”
Nash squinted. “Hold on – we’re talking about bullfighting here, right? Matadors, rings, the whole circus?”
“That’s right.”
“Six years old, huh?” The president whistled. “Guess they do things different down there.”
“I sure wouldn’t sign the permission slip for one of mine,” Engel agreed. “Especially not since it seems he took the stomp to his temple when he was eleven. Nearly killed him.”
“And he survived?” Nash asked, forehead crinkling with mild disbelief. “Must be made different, too.”
“He survived,” Engel agreed, his tone measured. “But by all accounts it changed the kid. And I stress, what we know about this guy is mainly gossip, so who knows how much of this is true? His organization is locked down pretty tight. We just feed on scraps.”
“Changed him how?”
“Mood swings. A tendency toward the use of violence. A lack of remorse. Not exactly out of left field for these guys, but he matched it with ambition. Started as a runner for some local cartel, carrying product between safehouses. We don’t have any records of him from back then. Nor do the Mexicans. But what we know is he became a sicario. A contract killer. And these guys follow a might is right kind of code.”
“So he worked his way up?”
“Yes, sir. Real American dream. Well, Mexican dream, anyway. He’s been running the Crusaders for the past three years.”
“So why am I looking at a picture of this Reyes character, Mark?”
Engel flicked the page in his file, causing the president to do the same. “Sir, last month we received a tipoff. Names and locations for dozens of Crusaders operating inside the United States. Mainly logistics types. They don’t tend to do much killing north of the border. That stuff’s restricted for Mexico. They know it brings too much heat.”
“Logistics?” Nash grunted, frowning.
“That’s right, Mr. President. Doesn’t sound like much, but we think they move about $20 billion of cocaine and opiates into the country each year. That’s street value. They have a network of distribution routes, safehouses, and runners that rivals FedEx. We’ve just never gotten such a granular look at it before.”
“The tipoff – where did it come from?”
Engel shifted uneasily in place. “Through our anonymous tip line, Mr. President.”
“Doesn’t sound like you’re telling me the whole story, Administrator. I wonder why that might be. If you’re protecting me for some reason, don’t.”
“The cartels aren’t like they used to be. They grew up and got professional,” Engel said. “Hired mercenaries to teach them how to shoot, and espionage professionals to learn how not to get caught.”
“And you’re saying we did the same?”
Engel bit his lip, clearly unwilling to say the quiet part out loud until Nash’s expression made it clear that it was less an ask, and more a demand. “Sir, when we get information like this, it often comes from our side.”
“You mean CIA?”
“Could be,” Engel agreed. “Or NSA. There’s a whole alphabet soup of agencies out there running around, sometimes hearing things they aren’t meant to hear. The information doesn’t come to us marked property of the Central Intelligence Agency, but that’s part of the game. This has that kind of feel.”
“Is it legal?”
“It’s a gray area,” Engel replied. “We can’t use it in court. So we have to catch them in the act. That’s what we’ve spent the last three weeks doing. In this file are the names of almost three dozen senior Crusaders, along with the locations of twice that many safehouses. My people have observed the movement of what looks like hundreds of millions of dollars of narcotics over the past two weeks. It’s time to bring these individuals into custody.”
“So what’s the play here, Mark?” Nash asked. He closed the folder and set it conspicuously between the two men, then tapped it. “You take these boys off the streets and what then? Two more come from nowhere to take their place.”
“The way I see it, sir, we’ve got a window. Carreon’s organization, the Federación, it’s on the ropes with him behind bars. As far as we can make out, they’ve moved 30 percent less product this quarter than last, and it’s dropping every week. We have an opportunity to take out the other major player – or at least, their distribution arm. It would be irresponsible not to.”
Nash closed his eyes and began rubbing his sockets. An image of his son flashed in the kaleidoscope that erupted on his retinas as he did so. The way he was in that picture the detectives had shown him. A needle sticking out of his arm. His lips blue. A trail of vomit dried on the side of his cheek.
“What’s the point, Mark?” he said in a voice that was little more than a whisper as a moment of doubt assailed him. “Where does this all end?”
“That’s not my job, Mr. President,” Engel said frankly, though his tone was soft. The younger Nash’s fate was no secret in Washington. �
�All I know is you take this much supply out of the market, it takes them at least six months to replace it. Maybe longer. That’s fewer new addictions, fewer families ripped apart, maybe a few less kids ending up in the morgue. But beyond that, sir, that’s –”
“– My job,” Nash finished, finally looking up. “Maybe it’s time I twisted some arms on the Hill about my narcotics bill, after all. It’s been dead in committee since before Christmas. Perhaps this gives me the political capital I need to bring it back to life.”
Engel just nodded.
“Okay, Mark. You have my permission. When will you start picking them up?”
The DEA administrator grinned and glanced performatively at his watch. “Oh, I’d say in about an hour, sir. Now I’ve got the greenlight, I don’t want to give them any more warning than we have to.”
6
“Long day, honey?” Eliza Ikeda grinned.
Trapp stopped dead in the doorway and looked his girlfriend up and down. She looked better than the day they’d first met, though since she’d been in the process of being kidnapped by a team of psychopathic North Korean terrorists, that wasn’t exactly difficult. He whistled and ostentatiously drank in her frame one last time, now down and up. She was wearing well-fitted hiking pants colored a rusty maroon, of the type that unzip to become shorts. Not exactly the attire of a style icon, but well suited for a week in the woods.
Instead of replying, he reached out, grabbed her hand, and dragged her toward him, planting his lips on hers and stealing a long, deep kiss. She pulled away, panting. “I’ll take that as a no…”
“You’re all set?” he asked.
Ikeda gestured at the hiking pack by the door. “Left yours there, just in case you needed to add anything. Car’s packed.”
The car, like the small, detached house, was rented. Someone at Langley had handled both, which was the way Trapp liked it. Better than paying for a mortgage on a place you only got to enjoy three months of the year. The government took enough of his paycheck in taxes. He figured it was only right they gave a little back. Besides, it was safer to keep moving around. The bad guys only had to guess right once.