by Jack Slater
“Yeah,” Kelly replied without looking up from her laptop.
“I’m surprised you haven’t gone stir crazy. None of these guys look anything like Conway’s handler. The last one must have weighed hundred pounds and I’m pretty sure it was a woman. Who built this damn code? Metro PD should get their money back.”
He idly tapped the right arrow on his keyboard, and another image flashed up. It was taken on a street of townhouses, from a traffic cam. The note on the system said it was mounted on top of a lamppost. “Hey – wait a minute.”
That caught Kelly’s attention. She glanced up at him. “You got something?”
“Maybe…” He zoomed in, and then again. “Sure looks like him, right?”
She pulled up a photo of the handler on her own computer, and put it side-by-side. The surveillance image on Pope’s screen was a profile shot, and taken from high above, but it had the same facial structure. “I think so. Where was it snapped?”
Pope went back to the map, and hovered the mouse cursor over the spot. “Here.”
Kelly squinted, then peered so closely at the screen her nose almost collided with it. “That’s M Street!”
“So?”
She stood up sharply, her chair toppling away from behind her, and held her laptop up like it was a trophy. “Don’t you remember?”
“Refresh my memory.”
With an exasperated expression on her face, Kelly put the laptop back down on the table. She pulled up the original map with the SIGMA pings on it. “Here, you see. That’s the first time the system picked him up.”
She traced her finger right, along the notation for the road. “And your image was taken at the corner of Brown Court and M. Does it look like he’s turning to you?”
Pope peered at his own screen. The figure of Conway’s handler did indeed look like he was turning toward one of the houses on the opposite side of the street from the lamppost camera. It was the way his body was angled, his shoulders starting to turn slightly. In fact, the movement was why the traffic camera had caught such a clear shot.
“You might be right,” he murmured.
“It’s him – I know it is!”
“Well, there’s only one way to find out. Let’s go take a look.”
35
They made the journey at night, in the back of a transit van. It was already dark by the time they entered, though after almost half an hour inside with no signal from the driver as to how close they were, Trapp was beginning to wonder whether it would be light by the time they got out.
“You know where we’re going?” Trapp asked Burke after yet another turn rolled them across the vehicle’s cargo section. He wedged himself into a corner for support and watched as the DEA agent and Ikeda did the same.
Burke shook his head. “Not a clue.”
Trapp cocked his head. “Would you tell me if you did?”
“Not a chance.” Burke grinned broadly. “Question of honor, you know? I made a promise, and I intend to keep it.”
“Good.”
Trapp nodded his head thoughtfully but said no more, and the trio settled into a period of silence that lasted another fifteen minutes or so, during which time the ride became significantly less comfortable as the quality of the road underfoot deteriorated ever further.
Ikeda banged her head against the van’s metal chassis as they bounced over a particularly egregious pothole and rubbed it ruefully. “That’ll teach me, I guess.”
At long last, the engine noise began to quiet, and Trapp sensed that they were finally nearing their destination. Unfortunately, nearing appeared to be a relative term, and the ordeal dragged on ten minutes longer as the vehicle rocked from side to side along an abomination of a road.
The motion ceased, and the engine died, and Trapp clenched his fist with quiet satisfaction. There was no air conditioning in the cargo compartment, and between the worn-out suspension and the evening’s lingering heat, he was beginning to feel decidedly carsick.
“What now?”
“I guess we wait.”
As instructed, none of the three was carrying any form of electric device. No computers, no cell phones, nothing connected to any form of network. It was harder and harder to go off-grid in the US these days, where in many cities it was almost impossible to function without the latest smart phone, or to have your license plate locked dozens of times on even a short drive, or to be caught in the field of the hundreds of surveillance cameras that dotted every storefront and street corner. It was a burden that few disliked as intensely as Jason Trapp – for the constant surveillance threatened the very fabric of his profession.
Rural Mexico, thankfully, was somewhat less advanced. It was an easy place in which to disappear.
The driver’s door opened and slammed shut, the force of the act gently rocking the vehicle. At the same time, the interior light in the cargo section blinked off. Trapp raised an eyebrow and then realized that no one could see so gave up.
Next, the van’s rear doors swung open. The switch from bright light to sudden darkness caused him to be temporarily blinded – which he suspected was the point. He blinked rapidly, trying to prompt them into functioning, but for the time being only made out the vaguest shape of a human being standing in front of them.
“Out,” the driver grunted in Spanish.
Trapp was familiar with the language, though rusty. He trusted himself to understand the best part of what was being said, though speaking it was an entirely separate challenge. As the gloom of the evening began to resolve in his vision, he shrugged and did as instructed.
The van was parked at the edge of a cornfield, and the tall stalks rustled in a gentle wind. The ground underneath was baked hard as concrete, and his boots crunched against the desiccated soil as he jumped lightly to the ground before turning and offering his arm to Ikeda.
As he expected she would, she ignored his offer.
“Kinda cloak and dagger, no?” Trapp murmured to Burke.
“I’m guessing you’d do the same if someone was planning to kill you, your wife and your daughter,” the DEA agent said.
“I don’t have a wife or daughter.”
“Use your imagination, big guy,” Burke said, smiling in spite of himself.
The driver, who Trapp now noticed in greater detail was a heavily muscled if not overly tall man, closed the van’s rear doors. He pointed at the vehicle, then mimed at Burke to place his palms flat on the doors and separate his rear legs.
Kinda handsy, too, Trapp thought, deciding rightly to keep that observation to himself.
He watched without comment as the driver performed a short but thorough search of the agent’s pockets, starting at his right ankle, going up and then down again, and then dealing with his heart. He found nothing more concerning than a leather wallet and an old toothpick.
Trapp was up next. The search didn’t go quite as easy this time. The right ankle was clean, so was the left, and the groin, and even both his pants pockets.
The Glock tucked into the small of his back, however, was difficult to conceal. The driver froze as his fingers met the bulge that could only mean one thing and took an anxious step back, drawing his own weapon and pointing it at the back of Trapp’s head.
For his part, Trapp didn’t move. He listened to an anxious rattle of Spanish and mostly derived from it that the guy had rightly deduced he was packing heat. Slowly, he looked over his shoulder. Ikeda hadn’t moved, though he noticed she was tense. Perhaps no one else in the world would have read her body language quite so effectively as he.
Burke looked at him in disbelief. “You brought a gun?”
Trapp frowned. “You didn’t?”
The DEA agent spoke to the driver in calm, reassuring Spanish. “He’s going to reach behind him, pull the weapon out, and place it on the ground. Okay? Don’t shoot him when he does it.”
Another rattle of rapid Spanish constituted, Trapp figured, agreement.
“You sure he’s not going to pull that tr
igger?” he murmured.
“Don’t give him a reason to have to find out,” Burke replied, sounding entirely exasperated.
Trapp did as he was instructed, slowly reaching behind himself and lifting up the back of his denim jacket. Next, moving with deliberate exactitude, he inched toward the pistol grip with his index and forefingers and bracketed it before closing them in a pincer and gently teasing the weapon free. A little later, it was lying at his feet.
“Any more weapons?” the driver barked, this time in heavily accented but perfectly understandable English. Trapp suspected it would be better than his own Spanish.
He shook his head. “Just the crossbow in the shoulder holster,” he said.
“Que?”
“Never mind.”
The driver kicked the gun aside and proceeded to frisk the rest of Trapp’s torso.
When he turned around, Burke was eyeing him with irritation. “You didn’t plan on telling me you were carrying?”
Genuinely surprised by the reaction – and a little irritated – Trapp grunted, “Do you need telling that the sky is blue or that water is wet? Come on, you know who we are.”
Ikeda turned to the driver with an apologetic expression on her face. Though an excellent linguist, her skills didn’t extend to any working knowledge of Spanish beyond the ability to order a beer in a Cabo beach bar.
“Listen,” she said, opening her own jacket and displaying the grip of her own weapon poking out of the holster underneath her left armpit. “We didn’t get the memo, okay?”
The driver stared furiously at Burke but said nothing.
Ikeda followed Trapp’s lead and dropped her weapon. An equally thorough search followed before she too was pronounced clean.
“So,” Trapp murmured quietly to Burke after the driver stepped away to place a call. “When do we get to the main course?”
“Who says we get to, after that stunt?” the DEA man said through gritted teeth.
“Hey!” Trapp protested. “Like I told you, we aren’t cops. Down here the only backup we have is each other. So you better believe I’m making sure I’m protected.”
Burke’s expression softened, though he said nothing. The driver walked over and gestured at them to follow. He left the two pistols on the ground, and Trapp knew better than to attempt to retrieve them.
They walked for about ten minutes down the potholed track. It was bone dry at the moment, but he guessed that a few months from now it would be a morass of churned-up mud every bit as sticky as the Somme.
They had to be at least half an hour away from any major settlement, which meant that though the glow of what he presumed was Toluca was definitely visible on the horizon, little light pollution fouled the night sky. Between that and the endless rows of cornstalks to either side, it was difficult to make out any information that might allow him to work out where he was.
That, of course, was the point.
Throughout the walk, Trapp was confronted with the distinct impression that they were being watched. He suspected that someone was following the small procession from the field to his left. There must have been a tractor track just inside the first row of corn. He didn’t glance at the source of the slight but distinct sound or give any impression that he had noticed anything amiss.
They turned a corner, and the dim shape of a building loomed out of the darkness. It was a large farmhouse, and though from this point he could see only two sides, he guessed it was a rectangular shaped courtyard. A little farther away, a large barn dominated the skyline, blocking out the stars.
Three figures were waiting for them out front. All men, each standing at one point of a triangle. They wore pistols on their hips, though none were drawn.
“Hector!” Burke said with quiet but evident satisfaction. “Good to see you’re safe.”
The man at the front nodded. “Thank you for your warning. I’m in your debt.”
“You’d do the same for me,” Burke said. “Though let’s hope you don’t have to, huh?”
“These are the two you mentioned?” Hector said.
He seemed to be studying both Trapp and Ikeda very closely. For his part, Trapp was doing the same. Hector Alvarez León was a striking man, even in the gloom. He was lithe, and in a way that reminded Trapp of Ikeda – the way she moved with a dancer’s grace.
He suspected that on this matter, too, he should keep his mouth shut. It was unlikely that she would either understand or appreciate the compliment. Which probably meant it was nothing of the sort.
“They are,” Burke confirmed. “You can trust them.”
“Can we trust him?” Trapp remarked.
Burke turned with undisguised irritation. “Dammit, Jason. He’s good people –”
“Why do you say that?” Hector interrupted. “You sound unsure of me, my friend.”
“I don’t like people pointing guns at me,” Trapp said baldly.
“I am not.”
“I didn’t say you were,” Trapp said.
He extended his arm and pointed at Hector’s chest, holding the limb outstretched for a couple of increasingly uncomfortable seconds before raising it and pointing at the top of the farmhouse, near the corner where the two walls joined.
“But he is,” Trapp said, rotating his body and shifting his attention to the fields just behind them. He located the point at which he figured the unseen watcher must be standing. “And him.”
He returned his attention to Hector, curious as to the man’s response.
The Mexican Marine stood silently for a few seconds, as if considering what to say. Trapp liked that about a man. It was never good to rush into a situation half-cocked, and yet too many did.
“You have good eyes,” León remarked. “Not many men can identify Espinoza in the darkness. He’s one of my best.”
“Let’s hope he’s not watching your back if someone ever sends me to kill you,” Trapp grunted. “You mind?”
Again, a short silence before Hector put two fingers between his lips and let out a loud whistle. Behind Trapp, a figure ghosted out of the darkness, and above, a small chip of terra-cotta roof tiling shattered against the concrete farmyard.
“As I said, you have good eyes. I’ll let him know.”
Turning to Ikeda, he said, “And you, Madam? What should I call you?”
“Liz will do. Nice to meet you, Hector. I can call you that, right?”
“I don’t have any other name,” he said, smiling for the first time and gesturing behind him. “Please, come inside.”
Trapp followed the trim young Mexican officer into the farmhouse. He was right, he saw – the building was a rectangle, built around a small courtyard, which, quite unlike the remainder of the farmyard, was a beautifully manicured garden. Ikeda walked alongside him and Burke a pace behind, his nose apparently still out of joint. It would pass, he knew. The DEA was the same as the FBI was the same as the CIA was the same as the Army; everyone had their territory and their ways of doing things and didn’t take too kindly to someone with different ideas.
They always got over it.
Inside, the farmhouse was dimly lit, mostly with candles, along with a few wall-bracketed electric lamps. The furniture was rustic but solid, and probably hadn’t changed much in the last fifty years. Perhaps longer. The walls were solid brick and whitewashed. It was surprisingly cool, a refreshing change from the warmth of the night.
To Trapp’s surprise, he found a woman inside cradling a young, sleeping dark-haired child. She was seated in front of a large dining table – grand enough for a dozen places – in an alcove near the kitchen. There were a few more men inside, two of them playing cards on a coffee table between two old, frayed sofas. They glanced up without surprise, then returned to their game.
All were young, in that surprising way of military men. Some looked barely older than boys, and yet Trapp knew without doubt that they could not be further from the life they’d once known.
“This is my wife, María,” Hector said, a s
trange expression passing over his face in the candlelight – at once exhausted, tense, and tender. “And my daughter, Gabriella.”
The front door closed behind the last of Hector’s men. Trapp counted about ten of them in total.
“You brought them here?” he remarked without either surprise or reproach in his voice.
“Where else would you have me take them?” Hector shrugged tightly. He leaned forward and kissed his wife on the cheek, murmuring something into her ear. She nodded and rose to her feet as a murmur of confusion passed through the daughter’s lips. María mimed that she was putting the girl to bed.
Though it was late, the table was still strewn with the remnants of a meal: black beans, spiced rice, tortillas, a simple salad.
Hector sat, the weight escaping with a grunt. “Are you hungry?”
“We ate already,” Ikeda replied quickly.
Trapp shrugged. “I could eat.”
He earned a sharp elbow in the ribs. “Jason!”
“What? I’m a growing guy, all right?”
That earned him a laugh and seemed to relax the rest of Hector’s men, which was his intention all along. He joined the Mexican captain and reached for a plate, which he stacked with a generous selection of the delicacies on offer.
“Did your wife make all this?” Ikeda asked, joining him. She stole a mouthful from the side of his plate. He’d expected that, too.
“I did,” Hector said, leaning back and rolling his neck. “It helps me think.”
“That can be a dangerous business,” Trapp remarked. “But it’s good.”
“The food – or the thinking?”
“Depends.”
“That it does,” Hector said with a low rumble that seemed to startle Ikeda before she realized it was a chuckle. He fell silent in a way that indicated Trapp was meant to finish eating before they got to business, which he did with gusto, even helping himself to seconds, much to her dismay and their host’s evident amusement.
Hector rose to clear the empty dishes, and one of his men jumped to assist but was waved away with an almost fatherly gesture for a man so young. It was evident that they respected him deeply. Then again, they would have to to follow him here.