Miguel Simón Muñoz shared half his DNA as well as his last name with his brother, Danilo. Apart from that, they were, now at least, from two different worlds.
He blamed their mother. When Miguel was born, she was married to his father, a hardworking laborer who managed to put food on the table and a roof, albeit a somewhat rickety one, over their heads. But his mother had quickly lost faith, then interest in the man. She pictured herself as better than him, and little by little, she drifted into a new life. Perhaps in her mind it was better, at least at first, than the honest poverty into which Miguel had been born. But quickly, it became an anchor of drugs and the things one must do to get the drugs, and it was bound tightly to her, dragging her under until at last, she was gone. Miguel’s father had taken the boy to live with his grandparents. His grandfather had died later the same year, and he’d been raised by his abuela.
As he again looked down the scope of his rifle at the stage which had been set up for the ribbon cutting ceremony, commencing in less than an hour, he thought back to the day Abuela had sat him on her lap and said that although his mother was now nothing more than a puta, his father had loved her very much. So much, in fact, that having lost her had become more than he could bear. It wasn’t until many years later, as Abuela lay in a fetid room, gasping for her final breaths, that he learned his father, in crushing grief, had hanged himself.
So, although his abuela had not actively worked to make him hate his mother, only calling her what she was, a whore, one time in his presence, it was not hard for him to despise her. She had killed his father by breaking his heart. He could think of nothing that would make him hate her more.
Then, through his tía, who had been saddled with her brother’s son when he was in his early teens, he learned that his mother had another son, his half-brother. Danilo. His aunt had told the boy, who she considered little more than a nuisance, that his brother had been poisoned in the womb by his mother’s drug usage. Miguel, like most poor boys in Mexico, grew up knowing the drugs came from the cartels, and he was tempted to hate them as well. If drugs had not been easier to obtain than clean water, perhaps his mother wouldn’t have left his father, become a whore, and given birth to the tiny monster that he first saw when Danilo was six, already living on the streets as often as he was under his mother’s “care.”
One of the first things he remembered wondering when he learned that he had a brother was why had she kept the broken-faced boy but had walked away from him, already tall and strong and handsome. He’d asked his aunt, who had told him, “She left you behind because you look just like my brother. When she saw you, she saw your father.”
He let out an angry growl and lowered the rifle. There were already people gathering outside the Gran Palacio de Deportes. But it would be some time yet before the American Vice President’s daughter, in all her yanqui hauteur, would stand on the platform with her oversized golden scissors, and give a speech about this being yet another successful partnership between Mexican and U.S. business. This even as the border patrol and now reactionary American militia shot and killed his people should they dare seek a better life in the el gran cerdo… the great pig… his personal nickname for Mexico’s abusive northern neighbor.
It wasn’t the Americans that caused the wordless expletive, however. It was Teresa Muñoz. She’d kept her married name, and had, in fact, never bothered to divorce his father before becoming his widow. He remembered his aunt telling him that the cartels, although certainly not in line for a collective beatification, did much good for the poor people of Mexico. His mother had been weak, she’d told him, but not a victim. If there were victims, they were the son she left behind and the little demon she’d kept.
For a long time, Miguel had watched Danilo from a distance. Once or twice, he’d even caught sight of his mother. Even from a distant hiding place, it was possible to see that she had once been a beautiful woman. But the ravages of her lifestyle had reduced her to something barely recognizable as a woman at all. And when he was sixteen, he saw her for the last time. She had come screaming down the street to where Danilo was sitting alone on a curb, the dust and fumes from passing cars coating him in grime, cursing him for not bringing her any money for over two days. Miguel had never felt much in the way of a connection with his half-brother. But as he watched his mother scream at the hideous child, then proceed to beat him in plain view of the impoverished residents of the slum neighborhood, all of whom either looked the other way or watched in bold-faced indifference, something in him changed.
She had snatched Danilo, now nearly ten, by the filthy collar, and had dragged him away, still raining blows with her free hand. He followed.
For some time, he’d been working for a group of men that he eventually learned were low-level enforcers for the Tijuana Cartel. Although his first jobs had all been menial and mostly legal, they quickly found use for his growing strength, and later for his cold temperament.
Now as he followed his closest living relatives down a dreary alley to a building that was little more than a corrugated metal lean-to, he stuck his hand in the pocket of his American Levis, the first new pair of pants he’d ever bought with his own earnings – the first he’d ever even owned, and felt the knife that his employers had given him to protect himself… as well as their interests.
Just as the woman was pushing her son’s twisted form into the shack, he came up behind her. Grabbing her by her hair, he yanked her head back, brought the blade to her throat, and whispered into her ear, "Hola, madre. Conoce a la muerte."
Hello, Mother. Meet Death.
Even in the shock of seeing his mother flail about spasmodically as her lifeblood painted the metal walls of their home, Danilo thought the words the big boy had said were the most beautiful he’d ever heard.
Over time, Miguel’s role in the cartel had become more important, while simultaneously less satisfying. He knew that he’d never achieve the greatness he believed he held within him. It was about that time that he heard rumors of a new cartel, led by a man named Alejandro Perez, although when most people spoke of him, he was called simply Diablo – the devil.
After a bit of cautious enquiry, Miguel was brought to the man, who saw in him great potential and quickly realized that the strong young man had much more to offer than street-side muscle. He recognized that, though not well educated, Miguel was as smart as he was handsome. He was taking a risk by switching his loyalty to El Diablo, but he was aware he would never achieve his ambitions in the old cartel.
His early work in the ECDD had been a series of increasingly difficult assignments, designed by Alejandro to teach the young man how to deal with any situation he might find himself caught up in. And, always, how to turn the situation to benefit the cartel.
It had been his rise in the new cartel that had allowed him to find ways to use his little brother. Originally, he’d tried to give him some of the menial jobs with which he’d been tasked while still with the CDT. But he quickly learned that his brother lived in a mental fantasy world of demons and angels, and he realized that in order to control him, to make use of him, he must nurture the fantasy.
But he also realized Danilo was not an idiot. He understood, ultimately, that the things his big brother did often meant someone would die. But death was common among the poor and did not frighten him. Especially since Miguel found so many ways to make it sound poetic. “The blossoming flower” rather than gunshot wound. “The second smile” as opposed to the slit throat. These things not only made Danilo manageable, they seemed to make him happy.
When he began his killing campaign, he made Danilo touch the various murder weapons before he used them, always wearing gloves when he took them from him – and when he used them. He feared his brother might be caught before he could finish impressing Alejandro, and had moved Danilo from the boarding house to the apartment block, and hired the neighborhood kid to tell him if anyone came looking for Cara Rota.
He rose from his crouch and sighted the gun on
the platform again seeing that the crowd had grown measurably. The position he had taken was ideal for the murder of Marybeth Koppens. It was the only high rise with a clear view of the sports complex but was angled in such a way that his shot would be difficult to trace. No one would be pointing to his shooter’s nest, like in the pictures of Martin Luther King’s assassination. He would have vanished long before the Secret Service would be able to find his aerie, where the abandoned rifle, covered with Danilo’s fingerprints and deoxyribonucleic acid, would be waiting. Glancing away from the target, the metal and fiberglass podium behind which the young woman would stand, he looked over his shoulder.
There, several blocks and nearly a thousand meters away, was the only building tall enough for someone, specifically someone looking for him, to be able to spot his form on this rooftop. He smiled as he looked at the glass exterior. The fools buried in the metal death-boxes south of Uruapan would be awaiting his return. They were the only people likely to have given him any trouble, for he was quite sure that was what they had intended to do. But he had been smart, just as Alejandro taught him to be.
And even though he was confident that they were still below ground, waiting for him to return and give them the second smile (or in the case of the woman some well-earned fun… then the second smile), growing up in cartels taught him a healthy paranoia. So Danilo had been sent to that rooftop. If all went well, he’d sit there waiting for Miguel to call the burner phone he’d given him.
If all did not go well, Danilo would handle it.
Nicole drove to the site of the ceremony while it was still dark. From the cover of the Land Rover, she’d immediately identified the only building capable of providing a line of sight and drove towards it. It was not a sure thing that the CIA would have shared with the Secret Service their suspicions about the deaths of the American girls in Tijuana, but Cole thought that under the circumstances of the Koppens girl’s visit, they would have thought it best.
However, there is an interesting fact about Secret Service protection. While POTUS and the VEEP could not refuse their wardship, their spouses and adult children could. Marybeth Koppens traveled with no security detail.
The high rise would not be secured.
Neither would the one building that provided a clear shot at the other. When she identified it as her perfect locale, she parked the Rover a block away and quickly found a basement entry that required very little in the way of locksmith craft. It was, in fact, slightly ajar.
Five minutes after locking the Land Rover (she’d promised Neal she’d take care of it, after all), she was on the roof.
The TRG-42 was equipped with an X-Sight night vision scope, but when she assembled the rifle and took up her position, her initial scan of the distant rooftop showed nothing amiss. There was no sign of human activity whatsoever. Miguel! Sleeping in on your big day? she thought.
Gradually, the sun rose, however, and she set the scope for daytime viewing. A little more than an hour before the ceremony was scheduled to begin, she saw Miguel slink to his position.
Her plan had been to take the bastard out as soon as she spotted him, but in his waiting position, a small structure which she guessed was an A/C ventilation system, partially blocked him from her long-range “hello and goodbye.” Only when he rose to take aim was there enough of his head exposed to fire upon.
Nicole had spent years perfecting the art of long-range shooting and was now a world-class sniper. Even before Miguel’s head presented itself to her, she had made the necessary adjustments to assure that her shot did not miss. He’d come up briefly on two occasions. Both times, Nicole saw him quickly look down his own scope, then drop back down before she could squeeze off her round.
She glanced at her watch and saw that the ceremony should be starting at any minute. At that instant, she heard a sound behind her. So intense was her concentration on her target that it took a second to identify. But when it was followed up by a second sound, this one slightly louder, she realized someone was attempting to open the rooftop access door. Not an immediate concern, she told herself, thinking of the push broom she’d shoved through the handle and a nearby concrete pillar meant to prevent people from hitting the door with handcarts or other paint-gougers. She’d done it on the off chance she received just this sort of visit. Cole forced herself to ignore the noise, which was now an angry pounding. She’d never taken her eye off her target and wondered if Miguel would take his shot as soon as Marybeth Koppens appeared. Having scanned the latest news articles about the event, she knew that the entire ceremony was to take no more than a few minutes. It would begin with the Mayor of Tijuana, Alberto Canizales, giving the young woman a quick introduction, followed by a few words from Koppens, then the ribbon cutting. She assumed he would fire when Koppens was stationary behind the speaker’s podium, which should be no more than a minute after the function began.
She brought her breathing under control. She felt the light breeze, still blowing left to right, as it had been when she adjusted for it. She had even learned to slow her own heart rate and she did so now. The next time Miguel’s head appeared… would be the last.
Behind her, the pounding intensified, coupled now with a sound she didn’t like at all. The broomstick was cracking. Nicole forced herself to ignore it.
And now, through her scope, she saw her target emerge. She suspected he would line up the shot carefully. Without waiting to give him a chance to become comfortable and fire, she squeezed the trigger. The rifle’s report was loud, but despite the stiff recoil, she quickly looked down the scope once more. Just in time to see Miguel’s head become temporarily hidden behind a cloud of pink mist, then slump out of sight, eternally.
The now rhythmic noise behind her could no longer be ignored. She dropped the rifle and quickly pulled her Walther. The broomstick splintered, and an instant later, the door was violently kicked open. Standing in the frame, directly in Nicole’s gunsight, was Cara Rota.
I should have known… she thought, about to pull the trigger. The ugly man held a sledgehammer, which he let drop from his hands as he saw her pointing the gun at him.
Screaming in Spanish, his voice ragged with shock, Danilo said, “You! You’re supposed to be in your tomb, waiting for your second smile!”
She could tell that in spite of the volume of his voice, he was far more confused than enraged. But then she saw his eyes drop to the cast-off rifle, and a moment later, a look of understanding made his twisted features seem so pathetic that she lowered the gun.
“Miguel!” he called. Looking up at her again, he asked, “What have you done, you filthy swine?”
“Miguel was using you, Danilo,” she said. “He was killing those girls, but making it look like you had done it. That’s why he gave you the gun to hold.”
“No! He said it was to give the loud-stick my magic!”
“It was not,” she answered simply.
Now as Nicole watched the small, broken man, his face turned from shock at the knowledge his brother and protector was dead to blind desperation. With an animal-like growl, he began to run. She raised the gun once more, but Cara Rota did not move towards her. Instead, he ran to the edge of the roof.
“No, Danilo! NO!” she cried. She fired a shot at his leg, hoping to stop him, but although the bullet struck his leg, it merely caused him to stumble, rather than dive, disappearing over the edge. The decrescendo of his scream curdled her blood as he fell thirty stories to the street below, even as the Tijuana business day began and the sidewalks filled with pedestrians. Nicole took a quick peek over the ledge and saw that, miraculously, no one on the ground had been hit by the plummeting body.
Now she changed her focus to disappearing herself. Taking the stairs down to the twenty-fifth floor, she calmly walked to an elevator that was mercifully descending and reached her mere seconds after she hit the call button. She rode the elevator to the basement, exited the door through which she’d entered, and casually walked to the Land Rover, which she’d serend
ipitously parked on the side of the building opposite the gasping crowd encircling the completely broken remains of Danilo Aguilar Muñoz.
Drawing the attention of precisely no one, she started the car and drove toward the border, toward her family, and hopefully toward something resembling sanity. Of the three objectives, she was certain of only two.
20
A Forgotten Little Circle
For the people returning to the U.S., the rides, though now on well-paved roads instead of rugged mountain paths, were bumpy.
In the case of the adults, those potholes came in the form of a long wait at the border as Manny’s physical condition sent up warning flares for the U.S. border guards. But eventually, after showing that all their passports were in order, then a thorough search of the Hummer, and finally insisting that his medical condition, while serious, was under control, the authorities could find no reason to detain them.
The story in the Lincoln was very different. The young people made the crossing without incident, but the tension in the car was so palpable, it made the difficulties the older men had experienced seem preferable.
Marc was not fully convinced by J.J.’s story of her mother’s kidnapping being strictly financially motivated, but as he had not been able to bring himself to tell her about Conrad, he felt he had no business challenging her.
He wasn’t sure why he’d eventually been able to explain everything to Tony, but when it came to J.J., he was completely tongue-tied about his affiliation with the shadowy Conrad Barker. The name had meant nothing to her brother, so he had no reason to expect it would to her. Still, something kept telling him not to go into it.
The Terror of Tijuana Page 19