by Sam Morton
He was reeling now, his whole body swaying in the booth.
"Gringo?" Veronica asked. "The man is an American?"
"A very powerful one at that," he said in a slurred whisper, confirming the rumors she had heard in town.
Espinoza stood. Unsteady on his feet, he nearly fell into the next booth. He caught the table top with one hand and dragged back in the other a newspaper someone had left. He sat back down like a heavy weight on the bench, this time sitting beside Veronica. She tried to move away from him, but he only slid further, pinning her against the wall of the café. He spun the paper around for her to see. The headline read, Stevens para el discurso sábado de la inmigración en Eagle Pass. "Stevens to Give Immigration Speech Saturday in Eagle Pass."
Espinoza pointed a meaty finger at the photograph accompanying the article. "This is the gringo who will pay us mightily to stop our friends from crossing the border."
"Senator Stevens?" Veronica asked.
"No, no." He said swaying again. "This man, here, with the light hair, behind him. He is the one who, as he says, 'calls the shots,' whatever the hell that means." He laughed hard and his sour breath washed over her.
Veronica hooked her arm through his. "Gerard," she said in a soft, almost delicate voice, "is my Uncle Viktor among the men you captured?"
"Not me, but yes, our men have captured him."
Veronica suddenly felt ten years old, a small and lost little girl. Tears began to well in her eyes but she fought them. "Do you know where he is?"
Espinoza ignored the question. "Enough talk. I've given you information, now you give me what I want." He leaned over and began kissing her neck.
Veronica squirmed and pulled her arm away from his. "Not here, baby. Not here. Let's go outside. I know a place where we can be alone."
She pushed him from the booth and led him by the hand out of the café, and around the corner into the alley where she and the boys had met earlier. She walked him past a dumpster full of rancid trash–moldering food and the dregs of discarded, stale beer. The ground here was a mush of nastiness and gave off an odor that turned Veronica's stomach. He pulled her to a stop just beyond the trash bin and pushed her up against the wall. His hands wrapped around her back.
"This is far enough, chica." He began kissing her neck again.
"Gerard. Gerard," she said, struggling against him. He stopped for a moment. "Can you just tell me if my Uncle Viktor is alive?" Her eyes pleaded with him.
His lips curled into an evil snarl. "Come back to my camp and see for yourself. You can share my bunk."
She slapped him hard and tried to pull away, but he only pushed her harder against the wall. The back of her head struck the brick.
"Did you know they call you 'The Ghost'?" He snarled the words.
She stopped struggling, widened her eyes, and stared at him in astonishment. Espinoza gave a breathy laugh.
"That's right, Veronica…Roni…General Omaga knows who you are. I'll fetch a fine price for bringing you in. Or I may see if the General will allow a trade and let me have you for myself."
"Let me go," she said, her voice trembling.
"Afraid not, chica. Now you know too much. Now give me what I came here for!" He shouted his last words as he pushed his hands beneath her shirt and tried to shove his tongue into her mouth.
She reached up with one hand and gave the signal.
Austin and Rico appeared from the darkness of the back of the alley, both still wearing their black clothes and camo face paint. This time Austin got to see how well his Mag light worked as a night stick. He brought it down square on the back of Espinoza's skull. It made a sound like a bat hitting a melon. Espinoza immediately lost consciousness.
At the same time, Rico hit the man in the knee with a baseball bat. It would be a while before he would walk again. That was Rico's aim.
Veronica almost lunged off the wall, pulling her shirt back down as the boys rushed in. As the soldier was falling, she slammed the top of her foot in his groin. "Hibrido." Bastard, she hissed.
The three of them stood heaving breaths over his body.
"What should we do with him?" Rico asked.
"Leave him," said Veronica.
"But what if he reports us to his superiors? He knows you, and he saw me outside the cave."
Veronica turned to Rico. "What's he going to say? That he gave away the entire secret workings of General Hugo Omaga just to try to get into a fifteen year old girl's pants?"
Then she pulled the paper she had taken from the café from her back pocket. The three moved to the front of the alley where the light filtered in so they could see. She showed the picture to Austin. His eyebrows raised and he tilted it so Rico could see.
"Well, well," Rico said.
"You know him?" Veronica asked, her voice tentative.
"Oh, yeah. We know him." This time is was Austin who spoke.
"This General Omaga. I know him, too. He is a killer," she said. She rubbed her forehead with her fingertips. "I don't know. I think we may be in over our heads. Maybe we should leave well-enough alone."
Austin saw fear in her eyes for the first time and it made him more determined than ever. A silent moment stretched into what seemed like a very long time.
"I think I know someone who can help," Austin said.
"Not your father! Please, Austin." Veronica said.
"No. Someone else." He felt a smile crease his face and he saw the perplexed expressions of his friends. "Trust me. This time, I have a plan."
Chapter 35
McDonald's
Hwy. 57, Eagle Pass, Texas
Even though it was more than an hour past the lunch rush, this McDonald's buzzed with activity. Several people stood in line to place orders. The French fry timers beeped incessantly. Every ten seconds Austin heard the gurgling of the fountain drink dispenser. The yellow and orange colors were familiar and so was the menu, but what struck Austin more than anything else was that everybody in the place, except him and the people he was there to meet, spoke Spanish.
He slid into a booth with his piping hot fries and a large Coke. Twenty-five minutes ago, he had walked across the Camino Royale Bridge linking Fuente, Mexico to Eagle Pass simply by showing his U.S. passport.
A man and a woman sat opposite him in the booth. "It is good thing you call me, young Mr. Austin," said Konstantine Pavlovich.
"I kinda got the feeling after you insisted I take the second business card and all the talk about being in intelligence in the army that maybe you weren't really a mechanical engineer. Austin lowered his voice to a whisper. "Do you work for the CIA?"
Konstantine shrugged. "CIA, FBI, NCIS…does is really matter which letters of alphabet I work for as long as I am on your side?" he asked in his thick Ukrainian accent. "Now this one here," he said pointing to the young blonde sitting beside him, "I can tell you she works for Immigration and Customs Enforcement–ICE. This is Agent Lyndsey Weatherford." He took a bite of his Big Mac and wiped his lips with a napkin.
Austin's memory instantly went to the day at the office a few weeks ago when The ICE agent pulled his bogus raid. Weatherford apparently noticed the expression that registered on Austin's face.
She tilted her head and extended a hand out to Austin who shook it. She had a firm, professional grip. "Call me Lyndsey, please. And don't worry, our friend Konstantine has told me all about the incident with Agent Boling. He's been reassigned to the Records Division, as I recall." She smiled and her eyes crinkled behind stylish rectangular glasses. "There won't be any of that with me. I promise."
Austin nodded his head. "Konstantine, when we spoke on the phone, you said you guys had been watching Jordan Steele for some time."
"That is correct. As a matter of fact, that is how I came to your father's consulting business. When we discovered Senator Stevens might bring his campaign to your father, we found a way to get inside with me posing as an engineer."
Austin's face flushed and his mind rushed into a panic. "C'mon
. You couldn't have ever suspected my father of anything!"
Konstantine waved both hands, "No, no. Absolutely not. We simply wanted to use his office as a means of getting to Steele."
Austin's shoulders drooped. "And Rico and I sort of screwed that up for you, huh?"
"That's how these cases go sometimes," Lyndsey said. "It's nobody's fault. But from what Konstantine has told me, you have a real chance to salvage it for us."
"Tell me what I need to do."
"Well, we can't very well go into another country and conduct surveillance–well we could actually, but it would take weeks to set up and you're already there visiting your friend," Lyndsey said spreading her hands apart as if what she was suggesting was obvious.
"Okaaaay." Austin raised his eyebrows.
"If you just happened to have a video camera or two, equipped, say, with night vision lenses, auto-focus, and wireless satellite relay transmission capability, and you just happened to be near those old coal mines next Saturday night…see where I'm headed?"
Austin smiled. If he could bust Jordan Steele and save Veronica's uncle at the same time, he would be her hero. "I like the sound of that."
"Good," Konstantine said wagging his eyebrows up and down. "Have we got some good toys for you in the van."
Konstantine and Austin finished their burgers and fries, and Lyndsey her salad. The trio walked out to the vehicle the agents came to town in. Austin expected some low key, nondescript white van with tinted windows, but this was a tricked out, fully loaded conversion van whose back seat folded down into a double bed. They got in and Konstantine pulled a shade that separated the drivers' compartment from the back. He handed Austin a black backpack. Inside were two video cameras and a laptop computer that had a small antenna attached.
"That is what connects you to satellite," Konstantine said. He reached into a drawer and pulled out a square plastic box. Inside was red foam packing that conformed to six earpieces with thin wires attached. "These are wireless communications devices." He removed one from the case and placed it in his ear. The thin, flexible wire curled down the side of his face and stopped at his throat. "This fits like this. The wire is a microphone." Konstantine grasped it. "It's so sensitive it picks up vibration in your vocal chords, so no need to have it right in front of lips." He placed the device back in the case and handed the entire box to Austin. "These have a range of five miles. Take whole box full. They break easy."
Austin got a crash course in working the equipment as the two agents made sure he knew how to operate each piece. As he repacked the backpack, Lyndsey handed him a small baggie with a few white plastic chips.
"Here, take a few of those," she said.
Austin examined the bag. "What are they?"
"They're GPS locater chips. You can put them in you pocket or your wallet or pretty much any where you want. We can use them to track you and pinpoint your exact location if we need to. The cameras are equipped with them, too," she said.
"Don't you have any weapons, like laser beams disguised in a pen or an iPod that's really a grappling hook and wire?"
The agents looked at each other and rolled their eyes. Lyndsey pulled open a drawer in one of the cabinets in the van and tossed three canisters of pepper spray in the bag. Then she reached into another compartment and pulled out an ink pen that had the ICE logo and "America's First Line of Defense" written on it. "Here's your pen, but I'm afraid it only writes." She gave him a smart-aleck grin.
"Ha, ha," Austin said then, looking at the pen, he remembered something. He pulled a folded piece of paper from the back pocket of his jeans. "Before I forget, could you check on something for me?" He handed the paper over to Konstantine.
The Ukrainian unfolded and read the paper. He tilted his head, pursed his lips, and stared at Austin, looking very confused.
"It's just a hunch I'm working on, but trust me, it's relevant," Austin said.
"I will look into this for you," Konstantine said, nodding his head slowly.
Returning his attention to Lyndsey, Austin weighed the pack in his hands. It wasn't all that heavy. Then a thought entered his mind. "What if I get stopped at the border going back in? The guards might buy one video camera, but how do I explain two…or the communications stuff?"
"No worries, young Mr. Austin," Konstantine said. "Lyndsey and I will drive you back across border. Even if guards search van, they will most likely leave you and your backpack alone."
Austin seemed to consider this. "So how do we account for a Ukrainian-now-American intelligence officer, a blonde ICE agent who looks a whole lot younger than you, and me?"
Lyndsey smiled and looked at Konstantine who used both hands to tug a John Deere baseball cap low onto his head. "Shoot son," he said in a Texas drawl, "I got custody of my boy this week. Me, him, and my girlfriend are headin' in ta' Mexico for a little bondin' time."
Chapter 36
Carranza, Mexico
Saturday, the day of the speech, arrived. Austin had gone over the plan with Rico and Veronica several times. They would go to the coal mines this afternoon. They had already scouted a location to put a stationary camera to film the mine entrance. Austin would stay outside and monitor that camera and operate the laptop to make sure its signal connected to a satellite. Rico and Veronica, again outfitted in black clothes and face paint, would position themselves with the other handheld video camera inside the tunnel in case the money exchange took place there.
Sitting around their camp in Olecia, Austin gave his friends several of the GPS locator chips. He took a sharp knife and slit the heel of one of his tennis shoes. He squinted and pinched the chip, shoving it deep inside the cut. "I'm going to put another inside my wallet, and a couple in my pants pockets. I want to be able to be found."
"Good idea," Rico said.
Austin offered him the knife.
"I'll do it later," Rico said.
"Are you sure this will work, Austin?" Veronica asked. Austin noticed the lines of worry hadn't left her forehead since she found out about General Omaga.
Austin took her hand. It felt natural. It felt right. He tried to make his voice calm and reassuring. "As sure as I can be about anything, Veronica. Somebody's got to stop Jordan Steele, and certainly doing that is key to finding your uncle Viktor. We have to try something. I have to try something. I can't just sit by and let this happen."
She squeezed his hand. "Don't think I don't appreciate what you're doing, Austin, but you don't have to save the world to be a part of it." She held his gaze for what seemed like an eternity.
He gave a half-hearted chuckle. "Go take a good long look in the mirror before trying that one on me, Veronica…the Ghost." He made air quotes.
She tightened her lips and nodded.
Both of them turned at the sound of Rico closing the lap top. He placed it in the backpack Austin returned from Eagle Pass with. He checked both video cameras and slid them in on top of the computer. Austin noticed a grim look on Rico's face, an almost sad, foreboding expression as if he, too, expected them to fail.
He stood up with the pack and trudged the few paces to join Austin and Veronica. "Off to the mines," he said with a half-hearted grin.
Austin clapped him on the shoulder. "This is going to work, man, I'm tellin' ya."
Rico sighed heavily. "If you say so, dude. If you say so."
The trio left their campsite and headed north.
Austin sat cross-legged on a hill overlooking the entrance to the coal mines. He leaned back in the dry sand on his hands and flinched every so often to flick off a bug or other crawling creature that decided to inch its way onto his body, or beneath its shade. He sweated against the late afternoon sun. He checked his watch realizing that Senator Stevens speech had been over for about thirty minutes. He knew Jordan Steele and General Omaga could be here any moment. Or it might be midnight, but he had no choice but to wait.
He placed his finger to his ear pushing in his earpiece and activating the "talk" feature. "How's it going i
n there?"
Rico responded. "It's dark and humid. I think there's a bat or something in here. And, oh yeah, Veronica says it's dank and nasty, whatever dank means. She says this better work or she's going to kill you."
"Tell her she sounds like she's back to her old self," Austin said. "I'll keep you posted."
Rico and Veronica had taken bottled water and some fruit into the mine shaft. They knew it might be a long wait, and they wanted to have some food, but they didn't want to chance taking anything with a wrapper that might make noise. It turned out to be a smart decision. Two more hours passed before the first sign came of anyone approaching.
At first, Austin saw a trail of dust rising in the distance. He lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes. An army jeep bumping toward the mines. "Okay," he said in a whisper he didn't yet need. "We've got company. Looks like Omaga."
This time Veronica responded. "All right. We're going to go silent now just for extra precaution. We'll be set up ready to go, and you just give us a voice signal to begin recording."
"Okay."
"Remember. We're silent. If you don't hear from us, even if you ask a direct question, we're fine. If you hear our voices, get out and get help. Got it?" Veronica ordered more than asked.
"I got it."
The jeep pulled up with three armed guards and a large man in the passenger seat Austin presumed to be General Omaga. He noticed that Gerard Espinoza was not among the guards, and smiled to himself, wondering how the guy was coming along with all the damage they had inflicted. Then a closer look at Omaga ceased his grinning as he wondered how much the general might've added to the damage. Off in the distance another cloud of dust formed and another spec of an undulating vehicle appeared out of it. Omaga checked his watch and nodded his approval. Three minutes later, Jordan Steele stepped alone out of a dust-covered car–a dark Ford Taurus.
He pressed the earpiece again. "Okay. It looks like everyone is here," he whispered into the microphone. "Start the camera." He checked the laptop. Its signal bars indicated it was transmitting a strong feed to the satellite. He clicked on his camera and then pressed the button on the laptop that brought up a split screen. On the left, he saw Rico and Veronica's view of the yawning mouth of the mine tunnel. Images from his camera appeared on the right side of the screen. Both cameras had directional microphones. Austin slipped a pair of headphones over his ears and adjusted the volume on the keyboard. The sound was scratchy and the voices distant, but he could make out the words well enough.