“But that’s a guess.” Vince said in the background.
“Just in case, I’ve emailed you photos, descriptions and pertinent information for the boys,” Alex’s Sergeant said.
“Thank you, Sergeant,” Alex said. “We’ll use them. Is there anything else Sergeant Flagg?”
“Um… sir? One more thing, I spoke with one boy. He answered the phone. Um… Lance Joiner. He’s the oldest of the illegitimate children. I heard a child in the background but I couldn’t tell you if it was a boy or a girl.”
“Did you speak with his mother?” Alex asked.
“Krystal Joiner? Captain Hutchins spoke with her.”
“Alex,” Vince said taking the phone from Larry. “Krystal Joiner was surprised we were calling, shocked even. She seemed legitimately confused as to missing children. She assured me that her two boys were present. In fact, she put the other boy, Jason, on the phone to speak with me.”
“Two boys weren’t taken?”
“Only two and the unborn child,” Vince said. “Oh, and Alex? Krystal Joiner was much sharper than the other women. She wouldn’t speak to Larry. She insisted on calling us back. She called a few people before she was sure we were on the up and up. The other mothers? They acted like they almost expected our call.”
“I wonder what that means,” Alex said.
“No idea,” Vince said. “We’ll keep working.”
Vince clicked off the line.
“Well that’s confusing. Benji, what do you have?” Knowing her Sergeant was fluent in French, she spoke French.
“Nothing nice,” Ben replied in French. “We’ve been reviewing off shore accounts with potential Joiner connections and consistent activity. These accounts show patterns that match Cee Cee Joiner’s usual level of activity.”
“Hookers and fried food,” Alex said.
“They prefer the term escort. But yes, we found the accounts through some of his regular vendors. They’ve been very friendly with immunity granting Federals. We’re about ninety percent certain these accounts belong to Cee Cee Joiner. A member of the security team will be at the bank when they open. We are hoping to find him through these accounts.”
“And the children?”
“Nothing. Larry and Vince have worked their butts off. And they have nothing. We’ve found nothing.”
“Do we know what Joiner was up to before he disappeared?”
“Shady oil deal?”
“Any idea who was involved or where the oil deal took place?” Alex asked.
“No. I was trying to be funny,” Ben said.
Alex didn’t state the obvious. Ben was a lot of things, but funny was not one of them.
“Patrick is working his contacts,” Ben said. “Almost everyone in South American hates Joiner. Did you know he was jailed in Venezuela?”
“Which time?” Alex asked. “You’re saying: We don’t know who; we have no idea why; and Joiner is off the map.”
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying,” Ben said. “Your Sensei wants to speak with Olivas.”
“Thanks Ben,” Alex said.
“How are you feeling?”
“Worried,” Alex said.
She avoided mentioning the obvious pain, swelling, bruising. She was even bleeding. Again.
“Yes, hostages first. We’ve got your back.”
Alex closed her eyes at his usual assurance. These simple words said from mentor to student told her he was worried about her. She nodded to herself. That’s good. She was worried too.
“Sergeant? Any word on where we’re going?”
“Yes sir. The Mariscal Mine. It is an abandoned mercury mine. It’s in the portion of the park Captain Vardee mentioned. Do you see it? It’s between Tally Mountain and Mariscal Mountain.”
“I see it.” Alex pointed to the topo map and Raz opened the topo map for the region.
“The Park Service received notification that a non-profit environmental group was going to clean up the Mariscal Mine with new mercury abatement technology. About four months ago, a crew arrived to begin work. The Park Service has copies of what looks like legitimate paperwork. However, the IRS has no record of this non-profit or anyone related to this project.”
“Bingo.”
“The men Captain Vardee referenced? They were supposed to be working on the clean up crew. Fake IDs, fake credentials. “
“What do you get from the satellite heat imaging?” Alex asked.
“GPSOC found five faint GPS signals. Cell phones, they think. The satellite heat reading shows… well… I’ll send you the latest pictures. Agent Rasmussen is skilled at reading heat scans. Can you ask him to confirm what he sees?”
“He’s right here.” Pointing to a new email, Alex said, “That’s for you.”
Raz opened the heat reading for the abandoned mine. Raz looked at the picture and puzzled. Pointing at the distinct blurry blobs, he counted. His finger hovered over one set of images.
“May I have the phone?” Raz asked.
Alex nodded.
“Sergeant,” Raz said. He listened to something the Sergeant said. “Yes, I confirm your findings. Yes, that’s correct.”
Raz gave the phone back to Alex.
“I think that’s it, sir,” her Sergeant said. “Call me when you get to the park.”
“What about the heat reading?”
“Agent Rasmussen will tell you. Oh sir, I received a message from Captain Vardee. He says the border patrol saw five boys.”
“Only boys?”
“Only boys,” he said.
“Thank you Sergeant.”
Alex closed Vince’s phone. Looking up, she discovered the men had been watching this entire time.
“We have a location!” Alex said.
The men cheered.
“We’ll brief in five minutes,” Joseph said.
Joseph tapped Matthew’s shoulder. Joseph gave Alex an Ensure shake to drink. Distracted by the ringing cell phone, she opened the drink then set it down.
“Troy, can you take this call? Steve wants to talk to you about possible South American ties to Joiner.”
Surprised, Troy looked up from his cards. He took the phone from Alex then walked toward the back of the plane.
“What’s on the heat, Raz?”
“Two dead people, one dying,” Raz said. His eyes searched her face.
“People?”
“Small people.”
“Children,” Alex said. “Your theory?”
“I assume they are killing them one at a time to get to Joiner.”
Alex closed her eyes for a moment. There was nothing was worse than finding a dead hostage. A dead child? Rather than think the next thought, she asked her next question.
“Do we believe any of the children are alive?”
“Yes. There are three, maybe four other children, five at the most. Two adults have a child between them. No way to tell what they are doing.”
“That matches Larry and Vince’s guess of seven boys,” Alex said. “They’re in a mine?”
“Maybe a mine office or the opening to a tunnel. They are not deep, less than a mile from the surface.”
“Anything else?”
“The second picture shows four adults in a building or a trailer near the tunnel. I assume the adults are in the trailer. You can see the trailer on the satellite imaging. What is our intel?”
“Captain Vardee of the Texas Rangers confirms the location of a trailer. Outside of vague satellite image, we don’t have great information. The Space Shuttle is on the other side of the globe and U-2’s don’t fly over the continental United States.”
“We’re acting on what we have,” Raz said.
“We can’t risk not acting,” Alex said.
“No matter how much information we have, we always end up walking in the dark,” Joseph said.
Joseph picked up the Ensure and gave it to Alex. Alex looked up into the face of her old friend, her Fey Special Forces teammate. She took a drink of Ensure then set
it down.
“Charlie said that before every mission.”
“Kill plan?” Joseph asked. “I’m not aware of a policy.”
“We don’t have one,” Alex said. “Not yet. I prefer the no-kill policy of the Fey Special Forces Team.”
“Leadership needs to decide,” Matthew said. “We’ll communicate our decision to the mean.”
Again, Matthew words sounded confident but his voice betrayed his uncertainty. He did not want to offend her.
“Same thing,” Alex shrugged. Her mind had moved on to how they were going to get there.
Matthew sighed out the breath he’d been holding. Glancing at Raz, he saw he was not fooling Raz. When Raz wagged his eyebrows, Matthew almost laughed out loud.
“What do you want Matthew?” Alex asked.
“I think we kill when we need to. We should not shackle the men with arbitrary policies,” Matthew said.
“Raz?”
“I’ve never been in this situation, Alex.” Raz shrugged. “I don’t really know what it’s like to be in battle. That said, as a cop, we shot as the last resort. Period. Every shooting is reviewed. Our job was to protect life, even the lives of the people who were criminals. No bad guys.”
Alex nodded.
“Joseph?”
“I like what Raz said. I know we struggled to keep to ‘no kill.’ In the long run, it made us trustworthy to captors. They could trust us to deal with them, not kill them out of hand.”
“That kind of policy only works where there’s a governing body that will prosecute. Raz took the criminals to jail,” Matthew said. “There’s no real international jail to take criminals too.”
“Well… captors aren’t really criminals,” Alex said. “Yes, taking a hostage is a very bad thing. But captors are mostly desperate people trying to make a point.”
“Maybe we decide for this mission,” Joseph said. “We haven’t agreed to do extraction full time. We haven’t signed these men onto our team. We’ve only committed to this single mission.”
Alex nodded.
“Shoot to protect your life or the life of a hostage or teammate. Do not shoot to kill unless absolutely necessary,” Alex said. “We’ll review each shooting.”
“Agreed,” Raz said.
“Agreed,” Joseph said.
Matthew’s face clouded with anger and worry. Folding his arms across his chest, he put himself somewhere away from them. He looked up when Alex touched his arm.
“What do you need?” Alex asked Matthew.
“To know someone has my back, I guess. If I kill someone, I’m not hung out to dry.”
“That’s what it means to be on a team, Matthew. We’re in it together. Every kill is a team kill, not a personal kill,” Alex said. “At least that’s how we worked under Charlie. He used to say, ‘Who had more control over monitoring the men than the team? Who knew exactly what happened? We share responsibility.’ It’s one of the things the Boy Scout hated.”
Matthew nodded.
“Ok, who goes?” Alex asked. “We’ll need someone to connect us to base. Joseph can take care of that.”
“Why not have Colin connect to base? The men respect Joseph and I appreciate his support.”
“It’s okay, Alex.” Joseph looked at Matthew. He put his hand on Matthew’s shoulder. “I have limited vision. It’s worse at night. I had Lasik surgery and got something called ‘The Sands of the Sahara.’ I’m not supposed to carry a weapon.”
“How did you stay in the field?” Matthew asked.
“We keep telling you this. That’s what it means to be on a team,” Joseph said. “We had marksmen and metal winners in every category. I wasn’t needed in that capacity.”
Matthew nodded.
“We’re going speed hike at least ten miles,” Alex said. “Uphill. Can you do the walk, Matthew?”
“Can you?” Matthew asked.
“I have to,” she said. To emphasize the point, she took another drink of Ensure. “He called me, Matthew. I have to go.”
“I’ll stay with Joseph. Trece and White Boy will go with you. We’d have to shoot Troy to keep him from going. Max?”
“He can function as our connection to law enforcement,” Alex said. “We’re going to need that. If something happens to us, we have you, Joseph and Max, to kick some ass. That’s good.”
“What about Colin? Yes, we need a medic. But he’s still a civilian.”
“Only sort of,” Alex said. “The way we were raised? Only Erin is a true civilian. Plus Colin is wonderful with children. Kids trust him. If any of these boys are still alive, Colin will know what they need.”
“Drunk or sober, Colin Hargreaves is handy in a fight,” Joseph said.
“Raz?” Matthew asked. “Will you keep an eye on Alex?”
“I’m assigned to ass-ist her in all things,” Raz said. “If I receive a contract for the team, I’ll request to continue as her partner.”
“Then we’re set,” Joseph said. “After you finish your Ensure, Matthew and I will update the men.”
Grumbling, Alex drank the meal replacement. She gave Joseph the empty container.
“We’ll wait for your action plan,” he said.
“Half hour,” she replied.
Joseph and Matthew moved to talk to the men.
Alex walked toward the cockpit to check in with Zack. The pilots of the Super Hercules confirmed receipt of coordinates for the Castolon Visitor’s Center from Military Intelligence. Blushing and ‘ah shucks’-ing at the Fey’s thanks, the pilots said they would land in an open parking lot where the Texas Rangers waited. Zack would stay with the plane in case he needed to come and get them. When she turned to move to the back of the plane, she heard Zack request a helicopter from Lackland Air Force Base.
Turning back to the passenger compartment, Alex saw Troy waiting for her in the hallway. Troy nodded to a corner of the plane. Before updating her on his conversation with Steve Pershing, he reached into his backpack and pulled out a thermos of hot coffee with milk. Like a young child, Alex squealed when he poured her a cup. When she had enough coffee, and enough news, they shared a Snickers bar. Restored by the coffee and candy, she went back to her seat to work out the mission strategy.
F
CHAPTER TWENTY-four
A half hour later
Saturday early-morning
March 29 – 12:07 A.M. CDT
Rio Grande River
Alex looked out across the water. Mexico and the Santa Elena Canyon Protected Area stretched to her right. They passed small dwellings tucked among the reeds and bushes along the bank of the Rio Grande. On her left, Bend National Park hillside rose in a sage and cactus encrusted hillside.
They crept along the Rio Grande in six canoes. Each canoe held three people: a Texas Ranger, one of her men and either a guide, a United States Border Patrol officer or a Mexican Grupa Beta. Trece sat behind the guide in the first canoe. White Boy rode in the last canoe.
They put in at Castolon Visitor’s Center. Using small outboard motors, they made great time along the Rio Grande. Shortly after passing Woodsons Campground, they shut off the motors to paddle.
Alex wouldn’t begin the mission until every man could recite each boy’s name, his mother’s name, his age, and approximately what he looked like. White Boy and Trece carried backpacks full of supplies. They were prepared for seven missing boys.
Their silenced weapons were prepared for the captors.
They would complete this mission in silence. No one spoke since entering the water. They had complete radio blackout. To avoid temptation, no one brought a radio or walkie talkie. They left Vince’s cell phone with Max at the Visitor’s Center. Even Alex’s pocket computer was off.
They inched their way along the river. The only sound was the soft slap of the paddles in the Rio Grande.
Raising his arm, the guide indicated they were nearing Tally Campground. They would leave the Border Patrol, and guides, at Tally Campground and move forward with the Texas
Rangers. Alex and the men would enter the mine while the Texas Rangers subdued the men in the trailer.
At least that was the plan.
Standing at the Tally Campground landing, Alex looked up at the ten mile hike in front of her. Less than two days ago, she’d fought with the Boy Scout and lost her Simon. Her pain ranged from the deep loss in her heart to the dull ache of her broken left arm. She dreaded the hike.
Yet, when Colin and Trece took off jogging up the hill, she fell in place behind them. Raz jogged beside her. Troy and White Boy closed rank. The Texas Rangers followed the soldiers. They ran straight up the hill until they were in sight of the mine complex. They slowed to a quiet walk.
The soldiers crept toward the entrance of the mine. The mine was sealed by a plywood barrier with a padlocked wooden door near the center. Taking a pair of bolt cutters from his pack, Trece watched for Alex’s signal to cut the lock. With weapons drawn, the Texas Rangers moved to cover the trailer’s door and windows.
On her right hand, Alex counted down: Five – Four – Three – Two – One.
On one, Trece clipped the padlock and White Boy bashed the wood at the entrance of the mine.
The soldiers ran into the mine.
Flipping on their headlamps, the men moved at a rapid but silent pace through the tunnel. A half mile into the mine, Trece and White Boy fell back to make sure no one entered or exited the behind them. Alex and Raz took the lead.
The sound of the Texas Rangers gunfire reached them and Alex started running. Troy – a faster more accomplished runner – passed Alex and Raz. Colin ran a foot behind Troy until he turned to investigate a side tunnel.
Alex reached the side tunnel when Colin gave a low whistle.
He’d found a child.
White Boy gave two low whistles indicating he would assist Colin.
With Troy ahead, and Raz at her side, Alex continued forward. Reaching the mine office, Troy skid to a stop and spun in place. Tipping his head to the side, he listened.
The mineshaft was silent. Only the drip from a distant water leak broke the tomb-like stillness. When Alex and Raz reached the mine office, Troy held his fingers to his lips. He shook his head then pointed to his ears.
No sound.
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