JT [02] Horns of the Devil

by Marc Rainer

  “That’s the analyst at work. The one who knows what I’m thinking before I do.”

  She turned back toward him and kissed him on the cheek. “That,” she said, “is impossible. But I’ll work on it. I’ll get you your who.”

  “I know you will. Thanks.”

  August 17, 2:16 a.m.

  José Rios-García, deputy chief of mission for the United States Embassy of El Salvador, pulled the bolt back on the Norinco SKS, AK-47 knockoff. The assault rifle and its twin in the front seat of the stolen black Cadillac Escalade were loaded with banana-clip magazines filled with steel-core 7.62 x 39 ammunition.

  “Turn here, Hugo. A quick right past the back of the building. Get ready, Mateo.”

  The Escalade went dark as its headlights were switched off. It left the street and crept slowly around the side of the car wash until it cleared the left rear corner. The tires screamed as they bit hard into the concrete. The two men standing outside the rear door threw down their cigarettes and lunged for the safety of the concrete walls on the other side of the door, but they were too late. The deep chatter of the automatic rifles was the last sound they ever heard.

  It was also the sound that woke Detective Dixon Carter, who had dozed off in the front seat of the Green Buick, which was parked again behind the strip mall to the south of the car wash.

  What the hell?! Wonderful. Now I have to call this in, and Willie and Bear’ll have my ass for being out here alone again. Shit, can’t ignore it.

  “Dispatch. Detective Carter, Homicide.”

  “Dispatch. Go ahead.”

  “Shots fired. Rear of the Qwik Shine Car Wash, 2110 Bladensburg Road, Northeast. Send two ambulances.”

  “Roger. Any description on the suspects?”

  No, goddammit. I slept through it.

  “No, dispatch. I was in the area and heard the shots. No description. I’ll meet the ambulances and crime scene behind the car wash.”

  “Roger.”

  Chapter Nine

  August 17, 3:47 p.m.

  Trask started the two-block walk north toward the United States Attorney’s office from the courthouse where he’d covered an arraignment for Bill Patrick, who was out sick. His first thought was to drop the thick case file in his office so he wouldn’t have to carry it across the street to the FBI field office. Two things changed his mind. He figured that Ross Eastman, the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, had probably left a message to see him immediately about the shootings at the car wash. The problem there was that Trask hadn’t had a chance, thanks to the morning hearing, to get the info Eastman wanted, and the last thing he wanted to do was to sit in Eastman’s office without the details.

  The other consideration was the weather. It was one of those August steamers, a hundred degrees in the shade with 100 percent humidity to match, thanks to those who had picked the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers as the site for the nation’s capital. Trask was already having to wipe his forehead with his handkerchief, and he didn’t want to appear in Eastman’s doorway looking like he’d been stoking coal in a packet steamer’s engine room.

  It was still early enough so there were shadows along the east side of 4th Street. He crossed the street to take advantage of the shade, which provided about four degrees of relief from the heat of the sun, walked past the entrance to the Triple-nickle, and crossed the street to the FBI field office. An hour in the squad room would give him the necessary facts for the briefing of the boss, and a chance to cool down a little.

  Dixon Carter was in Doroz’ office when Trask arrived.

  “You’re a little late for the execution, Jeff.” Carter looked as sheepish as Trask had ever seen him.

  “Willie Sivella stopped in to ream him a new one,” Doroz said, still sitting with his feet propped up on his desk.

  “I was told,” Carter said, “that if the Cap found me out on the street again without my youthful partner and mole, it would probably be my last day on the job.”

  “Sorry I missed it.” Trask sank into the chair beside Carter. “I’m sure it was entertaining. You deserved whatever was said, Dix, but do I understand that you’re still with us?”

  “Kinda like the fraternity in Animal House,” Doroz said. “Double-secret probation, except it’s not secret. And I get to be Dean Wormer. Thanks for putting me in that position, Detective Carter. Nothing I like better than having to write extra report cards on my senior task force officer.”

  “Sorry, Bear.”

  “So what exactly happened out there, Dix?” Trask asked. “I’m probably late for a meeting with my US Attorney.”

  “The official word, both for the press and anyone outside this office,” Doroz said, “is that Detective Carter just happened to be in the area when he heard shots fired, rushed to the scene, and found two dead Hispanic employees of the car wash lying by the back door. Perforated by AK-47 rounds, fired fully automatic.”

  “The truth, Jeff, is that I was staking the place out again from the parking lot in back of the strip mall. I dozed off and didn’t even get the plates on the shooters’ vehicle, or even the type of vehicle for that matter. The AKs woke me up, and all I saw were muzzle flashes and headlights.” Carter shook his head. “Sorry.”

  “Let’s look at the positives,” Trask replied. “You were on the scene and got something out of it. You’re sure the weapons were AKs and not some sniper rifle this time?”

  “Yeah. Fully automatic fire. AK-47s or clones. Unmistakable sound, even for a half-awake idiot like me. The ME did the autopsies early this morning. Kathy dug the usual cheap 7.62 bullets out of the vics’ bodies, and I saw the crime scene guys prying the same kind of rounds out of the back door of the car wash. No NATO rounds this time.”

  “And our victims?”

  “MS-13, no doubt about that, either,” Carter said. “Both of ’em were fully tattooed with the trappings of their fraternal association.”

  “So our theory is what?” Trask asked. “A drive-by ambush by M-18 members?”

  “That’s how it looks.” Carter shook his head again. “But that’s not how it feels.”

  “Why not?”

  “Ask your bride to step in, Jeff.” Doroz nodded toward the open doorway.

  Trask walked to the door. Lynn was already looking up from her cubicle. He tilted his head toward the office, and she nodded.

  “We were knocking this around this morning while I was waiting to be filleted,” Carter said. “Willie was a little late getting here. I said then that it didn’t feel right, that it felt like a set-up. I was too tired to figure it out, but Lynn wasn’t.”

  “Figure what out?” Trask asked.

  “That it would be stupid and suicidal for M-18 to pull this kind of attack right now,” Lynn said as she entered the office.

  “Because…?”

  “It’s the numbers, Jeff.” Lynn held up some papers. “You remember the initial briefing on MS-13? Ten thousand members locally, maybe twenty. I ran everything I could think of this morning on the M-18 numbers in and around DC. There was a murder of an MS-13 member on January 18 by four local M-18 types. Apparently the date was significant to them, and they went looking for an MS-13 rival to whack. They butchered him and left his body by one of the local streams. All four of the killers were arrested. The significant thing is that this murder’s the only recent M-18 incident I could locate that’s amounted to anything. All the intel estimates conclude there are only a couple of hundred 18ers in the metro, and they usually keep their heads down because the MS-13 troops outnumber them about fifty to one. The Maryland State Police wrote reports on four suspected homicides in the week after January 18. All of the vics were M-18 members. Probably retaliation in kind by MS-13 for the one they lost.”

  “Four in custody and four more dead. Where were those 18ers living—the ones picked up for the January murder?” Trask asked.

  Lynn picked through her stack of papers until she found what she was looking for.

  “Tw
o from Bladensburg, Maryland. One in Reston, Virginia. One with no known address.”

  “You thinking they’ll try another retaliation raid, Jeff?” Doroz asked.

  “Exactly. You’re the big bully on the local Central American gang block. Even if it’s not really an organized M-18 group tugging on Superman’s cape, you can’t ignore it. You can’t let your main rival start to move into turf that you own. You have to respond. The question is, where?” Trask turned back to Lynn. “Any demographics on where the largest concentration of 18th Street members is in the metro?”

  “I anticipated that question,” she said, smiling proudly. “To the extent there is one, I’d say upper Prince George’s County, Maryland.”

  “Bladensburg, again?” Trask asked, smiling back. It’s nice to have some common sense to add to the data collection.

  “It’s a reach, but yes. That’s the only place I could find with any recent, multiple arrests of M-18 types.”

  “Bear, can you—”

  “I’m on it,” Doroz said, reaching for the phone. “We’ll warn the locals and set up out there tonight.” He looked up at Carter. “Dix, you and Tim will be riding with me.”

  Carter rolled his eyes skyward, then nodded.

  “I’d like to come,” Trask began, but he caught the warning glance that Lynn was shooting at him and shifted gears, “but it’s out of my jurisdiction, and Ross Eastman is certainly going to order me to keep my impetuous young ass away from the scene. I’ll be at home, with our lovely and talented squad analyst, waiting by the phone. Keep me posted as soon as anything happens. Ross will be calling his counterpart in Baltimore within the hour, and he’ll want real-time information.”

  “Will do,” Doroz said.

  “I had one other reason for thinking it’s not the 18ers,” Lynn said. “I just found out about the car wash a couple of days ago by tracing the money from the deli insurance settlement. This Ortega character claimed that someone had burned down his business, and he just signed the settlement check over when he bought the car wash. How’d the 18 crew know about the MS-13 move to the car wash so soon?”

  “Where’s Puddin’?” Doroz asked. “Anybody seen Crawford?”

  Special Agent Michael Crawford, wearing shorts and a polo shirt that his mother had told him made his eyes stand out, waited a short distance away from the panda exhibit. Don’t want her to think I’m stalking her, he thought. I’m not, actually. Or am I? She’s a source, or a potential source, for now. He asked himself what would happen if she wanted to be more than that. What would win? The Bureau’s restrictions on dealing with a potential witness, or the other thoughts of her that had dominated his mind now for the past three days? Rather than answer, he chose to ignore the question.

  She came around the walkway looking at the animals. She was wearing another sundress, blue and white. He tried to walk up behind her, to surprise her.

  “How long have you been waiting?” she asked before he could say anything or touch her.

  “About thirty minutes,” he confessed.

  “I was waiting for you by the lions.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No.”

  She looked up at him, and then kissed him. He almost fell backward.

  “I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I just hadn’t expected that.”

  “It’s the twenty-first century in El Salvador, too,” she said. “I’m not required to have a chaperone when I leave my apartment, and I’m not even in El Salvador. Does that bother you?”

  “No. Not at all.”

  He thought of that priorities question again…and ignored it again. Another question replaced it. “Do you think it’s completely safe for you to be seen with me like this?” he asked her.

  She laughed again. “Give me your address, then. That way I can come see you where it’s safe and cool. I’ll make sure I am not followed.”

  “Let me know when you’re coming so I can clean the place up.”

  “No!” She laughed again as she walked backward away from him. “I want to see how you really live. I’ll surprise you!”

  He watched her turn and walk back toward the entrance. His apartment would be immaculate for the foreseeable future.

  At 11:47 p.m., Esteban Ortega and seven other members of the Washington, DC, east-side clique of the Mara Salvatrucha checked their weapons and headed northeast on Bladensburg Road in two vehicles, a stolen Chevy Cavalier and a Ford minivan.

  Chapter Ten

  August 18

  Ross Eastman was looking out the window of his very large corner office on the fifth floor of the Triple-nickle, his back to Trask, Doroz, and Bill Patrick, the Criminal Division chief and Trask’s immediate superior. Eastman was the epitome of a Washington political appointee. His manner, grooming, dress, and credentials were impeccable. He was average in height, average in weight, and average in actual legal ability, which made him a danger to no one—especially not to those in the halls of Congress where he had formerly been employed as counsel to the House Judiciary Committee. He had, accordingly, been a smashing success there and had been granted his appointment of choice, which turned out to be United States Attorney for the District of Columbia.

  Eastman’s strength, however, was actually one of character. He was the Washington anomaly, the public servant who actually wished to serve the public, even if it meant that his own interests might not be best served. He had learned he could best serve the nation in his current position by making sure that the most talented assets in his office got the assignments that required the most talent, and he provided those assets with any support at his disposal. Their successes then became his own.

  “This isn’t the end of this thing, is it, Jeff?”

  “I really doubt it,” Trask said. “Bear and the local guys were only able to pick off the van that had the MS-13 shooting team. Our guys rolled in on them while they were stopped at a light before they crossed the line into Maryland. There was a small Chevy with the van. The Chevy was on the hot sheet; the van wasn’t. Whoever was in the car peeled out and went through the light and around the squad car that blocked the van. The Maryland cops found the Cavalier abandoned about a mile away, nobody in sight.”

  “We concentrated on the van because we figured it had the shooters, Ross.”

  Doroz was completely comfortable using the US Attorney’s first name. He’d worked cases with Eastman years before, when the latter had been just a line prosecutor. That history and his own reputation in the FBI gave Doroz the freedom to speak his mind. Besides, someone else wrote his report card, so he’d decided to deflect the harder issues away from Trask.

  “The gangbangers like to roll by and slide the side doors open on those things, then light their targets up with the AKs.”

  “I can’t fault your decision there, Barry,” Eastman said. “And it’s good that you got them before they killed somebody. Plus, you got them before they crossed into Maryland, so we get to control the case, for now. We’ve got venue, District of Maryland doesn’t. What charges do you have, Jeff?”

  “Illegal possession of machine guns. Four shooters in the back of the van, four fully automatic AKs. We don’t want to charge a conspiracy yet—might give us double-jeopardy issues for what we anticipate will be an overall conspiracy indictment later. The driver gets charged as an aider and abetter, and he’s already on paper: probation for a tax case. They’re all MS-13 troops. Tats and colors, the works. Two from El Salvador and two from Honduras. The driver is a US citizen, born in LA.”

  “Did you serve the Vienna Convention notices?”

  “Yes, sir. We had the initial appearances this morning, and I put the consul notification forms, in Spanish, in front of each defendant. Not one opted for the notification.”

  “That’s a little strange, isn’t it? Not wanting your home government to know you’ve been arrested and locked up?”

  “I really don’t think so,” Doroz intervened again. “Our analysis on the Maras right now shows that they have not
hing but contempt for the new government in El Salvador, and the gangs are really at war with the new military regime in Honduras.”

  Eastman turned back toward the window again. “I got a call from the White House this morning, guys,” he said when he finally turned back toward them. “Not the Attorney General, the White House. The president’s chief of staff told me that he wanted to make sure I had my best team on this. They don’t want an international gang war breaking out in our capital city.”

  “Do you have any suggestions other than what we’re already doing, Ross?” Patrick asked. The question was an honest one, not a suck-up. There was no deception in Bill Patrick, a great walrus of a man well over both six feet and three hundred pounds with a large moustache that curled down around the corners of his mouth. He had moved into the criminal division chief ’s office when Robert Lassiter died.

  “No, I don’t,” Eastman responded quickly. “I do think we have our best people on it, both from our office and the Bureau. I just have a bad feeling about this.”

  “If it’s any consolation—and I know it’s not—so do we, Ross.” Doroz was standing and pacing about the room as if it were his own office. “Dix Carter is convinced that the car wash double homicide was just meant to look like a gang drive-by, with the purpose of starting a local firefight between the MS-13 and M-18 cliques.”

  “I hear that Detective Carter has been a bit off the reservation lately.”

  Damn. I thought we had a lid on that, Trask thought. Ross has his own sources watching us.

  “A bit.” Doroz knew not to try to minimize the problem, which was now exposed. “I think we’ve addressed that, and he’s still the best detective the Metro Police can give us. You did say that’s what you wanted?”

  “Of course, and I know he’s a fine detective,” Eastman retreated. “Just as long as you think he’s still contributing to the investigation.”

  “He’s contributing a lot,” Doroz said. “Despite the personal problems, he sees things the rest of us miss. His instincts are still flawless.”