by Jack Slater
Though it did get tiring.
“Okay,” Trapp muttered, removing his jacket and throwing it onto the couch just long enough for Ikeda to pick it up and shoot him a reproving look. “Give me a minute, I’ll just jump in the shower, then we can go.”
Ikeda’s eyebrow danced upward. “Want any company?”
Trapp considered it for a second before shaking his head ruefully. “Like you said, long day. And we’ve got a four-hour drive ahead of us.” He glanced at his watch. “Should get there before dark, if we’re lucky with traffic.”
She slumped down on the couch and crossed her arms with mock irritation, poking out her tongue as she said, “You’ve changed, man.”
Trapp shook his head as he departed, pulling off his shirt to the soundtrack of an approving whistle. The rest of his clothing fell off out of sight, and he was in the shower in record time. The soapsuds were just streaming off his body when the door to the bathroom opened a crack, then swung wide.
“Don’t get excited,” Ikeda said loudly over the thundering of raindrops against the bathtub’s porcelain, her lithe frame just about visible through the shower curtain. “You had your chance. I just forgot my toothbrush, that’s all.”
“Tease…” Trapp grumbled.
They were on the road ten minutes later. The car was nondescript but spacious enough to ingest all their camping gear without blocking the view out the back. It was Japanese, which meant it handled well, but when the hybrid motor kicked in, you sometimes forgot you were driving at all.
Several hours passed as they chased the sun across the horizon, and suburbia gave way to the raw beauty of the Allegheny Mountains, their home for the next few days. They pulled into a parking lot just east of Cheat Bridge, right before the tugging at the bottom of Trapp’s eyelids began to worry him.
They hiked about ten minutes into the forest before he grimaced, reaching down to tap his pocket. “You bring a cell phone?”
“Like hell I did!” Ikeda replied hotly, spinning around so that he could see more of her than the back of her pack. “The world can handle a few days without you, Jason. It managed before you came along, and I’m sure it will do just fine after.”
“You know, if you weren’t so damn good-looking,” he grumbled, “you wouldn’t get away with half the stuff you do. Anyway, it’s not about that. I haven’t spoken to Mike for weeks. I get the sense he’s putting me out to pasture.”
“Then what?” Ikeda asked, relaxing a little.
Trapp looked pointedly down at his hiking boot-clad ankles. “How far you figure you could carry me if I broke my leg?”
Ikeda’s dark pigtail danced in the fading light as she cocked her head to one side. “Are you planning to?”
“Not presently,” he replied mildly. “But you know what they say, fail to prepare –”
“Prepare to fail,” she replied, reaching into her half-zipped gilet and removing a dark plastic rectangle attached to a lanyard around her neck.
“You’ve thought of everything, huh?”
“You bet your ass.” She grinned, making a show of placing her hands on her hips. “And you know something?”
“I’m guessing you’re about to tell me,” he said dryly.
“You really need to up your self-help game. I mean c’mon, Jason, fail to prepare? What are you reading right now, a 1940s Boy Scouts of America handbook?”
The sound Trapp made in response was more of an indistinct grumble emanating deep inside his throat than anything that could truthfully be said to resemble diction.
It took a little over an hour to hike to their chosen campsite, by which time the luminous tips of the hands of Trapp’s watch were dimly visible every time his arms swung at his sides. Beams from the flashlights strapped to both his and Ikeda’s foreheads lit up about twenty yards of forest in whichever direction they chose to look. The rest was swallowed by darkness.
“Satellite or star?” Ikeda said, stopping so suddenly that he crunched into the back of her and had to reach out and grab the straps on her pack to save her from tumbling over.
“Space station, I’m guessing,” Trapp said, glancing up once her boots were settled firmly back on the ground. “Though I guess it could be one of those new satellite constellations. It’s a real free-for-all up there right now, I hear.”
“You hear? Where do you hear?”
“The news.”
“You don’t read the news.”
“I’m like Chuck Norris. The news reads me.”
She rolled her eyes. “Try saying that with a straight face.”
“You got me.” Trapp grinned, dumping his pack onto the turf with a sigh of relief. “It was some briefing at Langley. They make me sit through them from time to time. Guess maybe they’re trying to transition me to a desk job.”
“You want that?”
Trapp shrugged. “Not really. Truth be told, I’m not really sure what I want. This training gig with the Bureau ain’t so bad. But –”
“It doesn’t feel the same?”
“Not really.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” Ikeda mused. “You’re not getting any younger.”
“Thanks.”
“You know what I mean…”
“Yeah,” he replied, massaging his shoulder, which as so often these days was tight, verging on painful. “I guess I do.”
“Sore subject?”
“Sore shoulder,” he said, sidestepping the question.
“Well, maybe a break is as good as a change,” Ikeda said brightly, pulling the tent pack from her backpack. “And we’ve got all week to find out.”
7
Federal Social Rehabilitation Center no. 1 Almoloya
Estado de Mexico.
The convoy rolled through the first, then the second of the two military checkpoints that guarded the final approaches to Altiplano prison without incident. It was, after all, expected. The man in the fifth vehicle, the waiting warden knew, was a senior lieutenant to the leader of the Crusaders Cartel. Not important enough to merit a helicopter transfer to the helipad to the west of the prison, but sufficiently valuable to demand an escort of twenty heavily armed paramilitaries. Though it looked like more.
It was almost midnight, but that was not in itself unusual – high-value inmates were often transported early in the morning or last thing at night because the roads were empty and thus quick. More than one such motorcade had been ambushed by cartel gunmen over the years, and the authorities had learned to adapt. It was an arms race. The police purchased ballistic vests, and the cartels bought bigger guns. The Army acquired tanks, so the gunmen returned with rockets.
On and on the wheel turned, tallying up with every revolution an endless list of the names of the dead.
Red and blue lights flashed on top of the armored vehicles, which were emblazoned in white lettering with the words GUARDIA NACIONAL. Their sirens did not sound, which gave the procession a funereal quality when viewed from a distance.
They slowed for a third time at the main gateway into the prison, which was flanked on either side by a pair of light tanks belonging to the Mexican army – a brash but highly effective deterrent to anyone foolish enough to contemplate attacking the prison itself.
Such a thing had never happened before. But this was Mexico, in the second decade of a brutal war against the narcotics cartels—a war which the government wasn’t losing, but certainly was not winning.
And that, as far as anyone who thought about it knew, meant only that such a thing had not happened yet.
Altiplano, after all, was the prison in which the famed Joaquin Guzman had once been incarcerated.
Which meant that it was the prison from which the drug kingpin known as El Chapo had subsequently escaped, courtesy of a 1.5 mile-long tunnel that exited directly into the cartel leader’s cell.
Security had been beefed up since then, of course. Not just the two tanks at the gate, or the military checkpoints. No one was allowed within 500 yards of the prison, and
every structure or plant taller than a blade of grass had been leveled to ensure clear fields of fire for the snipers in the guard towers that dotted the now-dark walls, blazing like torches in the night.
And there were other, less visible additions too. Delicate instruments buried deep beneath the ground, capable of detecting even the burrowing of a small rodent. Jamming devices that blanketed the airwaves with static, so that inmates could no longer communicate with their compatriots on the outside.
No, the planners in Mexico City were certain that nothing short of a frontal assault on the prison would be successful, and preparations had even been made to counter that infinitely unlikely scenario. As long as the hundreds of armed prison guards inside the walls could hold out for twenty minutes, Air Force helicopters would blanket the skies overhead, closing off all routes out.
Another twenty would bring the Naval Infantry Corps.
The Marines.
The convoy sped through two sets of internal chain-link fences before coming to a halt in the exercise yard just behind the prison walls. For a few seconds, silence reigned, and all that could be heard was the clinking and groaning of heated metal as the armored vehicles settled on the dirt.
Then the crunch of boots as the warden walked halfway to the unmoving procession, flanked forward and behind by a pair of armed prison guards. He was a shorter man than the four around him and wore only thin-soled leather shoes rather than boots, which didn’t help. The disparity meant that he only caught occasional glimpses of the stopped vehicles as he made the journey toward them, occasionally squinting against the glow of the prison’s floodlights as he wondered why nobody was getting out.
His small group came to a halt, and two guards flanked him on either side. And then they all waited. Ten seconds passed. Then another ten.
The warden coughed nervously, drawing a side-glance from one of the prison guards to his right. “Everything okay, boss?”
The small man smoothed his suit jacket against his torso in an act that was meant to convey calm but produced an effect that was quite the opposite. In truth, he hated nights like tonight. They reminded him of the danger that came holding hands with the job.
Of course, a little voice reminded him, tinged with shame, there is no danger really.
Not for him.
After all, he accepted the payments and kept the inmates comfortable. The ones who mattered, anyway. The cartels knew where the line lay, and they toed it exactly. A bottle of whiskey slipped into a cell after dusk. The occasional visit by a woman of the night. He rationalized his transgressions to himself by reasoning that he wasn’t doing anything truly wrong. This way, he stayed alive, the prisoners stayed behind bars, and no one caused any trouble.
He’d heard about this particular transfer twice in the space of the same hour. First from the independent broker who handled such matters for the cartels, and only then from the prison department. The first payment was already in his retirement account.
Finally there was movement. As though the action was coordinated, every door on four of the five armored vehicles swung open, and armed gunmen in dark blue fatigues jumped onto the dirt with easy grace. They fanned out, forming a loose ring around the stopped convoy.
One of the warden’s guards reflexively reached for his weapon.
“Easy, Luis,” the warden murmured, gesturing at the most junior of the guards who accompanied him. “It’s always the same. They like to make a show.”
“Sorry, boss,” the guard replied shamefacedly.
The warden watched as the armed men came to a halt, some dropping to their knees and bringing their rifles to their shoulders, searching for targets on the walls and in the guard towers. A chill swept down his neck, belying the heat.
But a second later, a command rang out ordering the newcomers to stand easy, and as one, they relaxed. The same man from whom the command had emanated lifted a radio to his lips and issued a second order, which seconds later prompted the doors of the final armored vehicle to swing open.
Four men climbed out. One wore the same light-brown prison uniform worn by the inmates of his own institution. The prisoner had a black bag over his head and was shackled at the ankles and wrists, which themselves were chained to a thick leather strap around his waist. He jangled as his guards lowered him to the ground.
The chiming stopped briefly, then restarted as the four-man procession began walking toward the welcoming committee. The three receiving guards were armed only with bright yellow tasers, but the warden noticed that the eyes of the masked men all around never missed a step.
“They’re getting more competent,” he muttered. The Mexican National Guard was a relatively new organization, first constituted only a year earlier. It was nominally both led and staffed by civilians, though it hadn’t escaped notice that the bulk of its equipment and manpower had been provided by the military.
And they hadn’t sent their best.
But maybe that was changing, he reflected. This squad appeared well drilled.
The small formation stopped in front of him, and he watched as two of the guards grabbed their prisoner’s upper arms and pushed him to the floor. He collapsed with a grunt, and would have toppled over, had they not retained their hold.
“Prisoner Emmanuel Garcia,” the front most of the man’s escorts barked in strange, clipped Spanish. “To be held for pre-trial detention.”
“You have the papers?” the warden inquired softly, reaching out his arm.
The man nodded and reached inside one of the pockets on his ballistic vest, pulling out a sheaf of forms which he handed over. Other than that, he did not give a name, or even show his face. That was not entirely unusual, however.
“Can I ask you a favor, warden?”
He looked up from perusing the documentation, satisfied that all seemed in order. “Of course…”
His opposite number adopted a soft, almost wistful tone, leaning forward so that the words were for the warden’s ears only. “Do you mind if I bring a couple of my men to the control room to watch as Garcia is taken to his cell? We’ve been hunting this rat for a long, long time. My men, they have lost friends. Brothers. It would do them good to see the fruits of that sacrifice.”
The warden paused to consider the request. It was unorthodox, but impossible to refuse.
“It won’t be that interesting…” he warned. “But if that’s what you want, I have no problem with it.”
“My friend,” the masked man breathed, visibly satisfied, “believe me when I tell you, it will be fascinating for us.”
8
The Guardia Nacional officer was breathing heavily, the warden thought, as the two men watched the new inmate being led through the prison’s gray concrete hallways. He was headed for the maximum-security section, where the majority of the high-value cartel detainees were kept, both those awaiting trial and those for whom their cell’s bare walls would prove the limits of their universe for the rest of their lives.
It was a strange quirk of the prison’s setup that the high-security wing required the fewest guards to man it. The hallway gates were electronically operated, unlike most in the jail, and required the presentation of both a physical key card and confirmation from an operator inside the control room that he currently occupied.
The warden did not kid himself that the system was failsafe, but it was at least fail resistant. As secure as any human-controlled system could be.
Half a dozen of his guards were assigned to precisely that task, and the warden allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction as he watched the small procession come to a halt at the final gate that governed entry into the maximum-security wing. The Guardia Nacional troops stopped and physically secured their charge with a hand on each shoulder as the prison guard leading them reached for the card attached to his belt by a section of elasticated cord. He leaned and held it against the corresponding reader before shooting a thumbs-up toward the nearest camera.
He’s not going anywhere, the warden thou
ght, amused at the extra precaution. But whatever makes you happy.
“Do we meet your expectations, señor…?” he said out loud, trailing off as he realized he didn’t know the soldier’s name.
“César,” the man replied with a strange inflection. He seemed to exhale slightly as his men led their prisoner through the gate, and he turned toward the warden. “And very much so. Thank you for allowing me to watch this, sir. You have made me very happy indeed.”
“I’m glad you got what you needed,” the warden replied with an easy smile. He didn’t pretend to understand the officer’s needs, but they had proved easy to accommodate. “Will that be all?”
His counterpart nodded and peeled his mask off his head. It dropped to the ground, and the warden thought the man looked familiar. But from where?
César smiled. “For you, yes…”
The warden blinked at the reply, puzzled at its meaning. He wasn’t left hanging for long. The Guardia Nacional officer drew his weapon from the holster at his right side and raised it to a point between the warden’s eyes.
And fired.
“Captain!”
Hector León froze with his rear end approximately two inches from the seat of his office chair, a steaming plastic container containing leftovers of his wife’s cooking the previous night in his hands. His chin dipped slightly toward his chest as he realized what was coming.
He sighed and placed his lunch on the desk in front of him, sensing from the urgency in his second-in-command’s voice that it would be stone cold by the time he was able to return to it. “Lieutenant?”
The young man was out of breath as he barged through Captain León’s office door – and Hector knew that it was not a result of physical exertion. His men were far too fit for that. Even the officers.