Cartel

by Chuck Hustmyre

  "But he wants people in the United States to see it, to know what happened."

  Larios took a deep breath and got his emotions under control. That was how people made mistakes. Acting on emotion. That's how they got killed or captured. Which is exactly what had happened to his predecessor, Miguel Tre-vino, aka El Coronel, whose code name had been "Z-40." The Infanteria de Marina, the Mexican Marines, had cap-tured him on the border in Nuevo Laredo. Now, Larios, codenamed "Z-50," was determined not to make the same mistake. He made decisions based on logic, not emotion. And it was logic that told him the American government would destroy the video if it could. Which meant he had to get it first.

  "Kill the DEA agent and bring me the video," Larios ordered.

  "But I can get the video without killing him."

  "No, I want him dead. El Gordo blamed the other agent's death on me. I will blame this one on him." Larios laughed. "Then he and I will be even."

  "There are hundreds of people here. I can't just-"

  "Are you armed?"

  "Yes."

  "Shoot him in the head and take the video," Larios said. "Then just walk away. No one will stop you."

  "I can't."

  "Do it," Larios shouted. "Or I will kill you, your daugh-ter, your uncle the priest...even your sister in Cincinnati."

  There was a pause. Then in a strained voice Benny said, "Thank you, Maria. I'll call you later." The line clicked and the call was disconnected.

  Larios stared at the phone for a few seconds. His pet policia was muy loco. Then he shoved the phone back into his pocket. The torero had stopped his practice and the bull was pacing back and forth, snorting and stamping his front hooves. Larios shouted at the torero, "Get back to work."

  Chapter 43

  Scott was walking toward Benny, no more than ten feet away, when he heard her say into the payphone, "Thank you, Maria. I'll call you later." When she hung up there were tears in her eyes.

  "Is everything all right?" he asked.

  She glanced away and wiped her face with her hands. Then said, "I thought we were going to meet by the bridge."

  "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing...I miss my daughter."

  "They're watching the bridge."

  "Who?"

  "A black SUV, tinted windows," he said. "At least two Americans inside."

  She nodded and wiped more tears from her cheeks.

  "Something has really upset you," Scott said. "What is it?"

  "I'm just scared, okay? Scared for my daughter." She dropped her voice to a whisper. "The cartels know every-thing about me, which means they know everything about her."

  "It's not the cartels chasing us."

  "The Americans are working with the Sinaloa," she said. "The video proves that."

  "Some Americans are. Not all of us."

  Benny was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "I have to go get my daughter." She started to walk away.

  Scott grabbed her arm. "I need you."

  "You have the video and you know who's on it."

  "You're the provenance."

  "What does that mean?"

  "The proof of where it came from."

  "I don't know where Michael got it."

  "But you saw him with it," Scott said. "He told you it was something he was working on, something important."

  They stared at each other for a moment.

  "All I need is a statement," Scott said.

  "Then get some paper and a pen, and I'll write one for you right here."

  "Look, I understand you're scared for your daughter's safety. I'm scared for my kids too."

  "Your children are not in Mexico."

  "How many girls go to her school?"

  "It's an all-girl school."

  "So how many students?"

  Benny shrugged. "Five hundred, maybe. Why?"

  "Anyone in the cartels know what Rosalita looks like?"

  "I don't know."

  "How would they?" Scott said. "How could they tell her from hundreds of other girls?"

  "They probably couldn't."

  "But they know what you look like, right?"

  She nodded.

  "So if someone is watching the school and you pick Rosalita up, they'll have you both. But your friend is picking her up, so no one will know she's your daughter."

  Benny didn't respond.

  "Right now Rosalita is safer if you stay away from her," Scott said.

  "And do what?"

  "What we planned. Take the video to Glenn Peterson."

  "How do you know he's not working with the cartels?"

  "We're bringing the video to him," Scott said. "If he was working with the other side, he wouldn't need to stop us or even have us followed. All he would have to do is wait for us to show up with it."

  "And if I go with you, and talk to your boss, what then?"

  "You said you want to get out of Mexico, to move to the United States."

  "I do."

  Scott touched the flash drive through his shirt. "This is how you can do that. Once it goes public...it won't be safe for you or Rosalita here."

  "Where can we go?" Benny said.

  "Do you get along with your sister in Cincinnati?"

  "Of course."

  "Then how about Cincinnati?"

  There was a flicker of hope in her eyes. "How do I get Rosalita?"

  Scott hadn't quite worked that out, but he wasn't going to admit it. Benny needed to see him being positive and con-fident. "We'll get her across. Today." He was thinking about Peterson and Garza. Peterson could arrange things with Cus-toms and Border Protection, and Garza could pick the little girl up from Benny's friend and scoot her across the border.

  Benny gave him a weak smile. And a nod.

  Scott looked around. A steady stream of people were flowing past them. He and Benny were standing still, which meant they were standing out. "First, we need to deliver the video." He looked toward the bridge. He couldn't see the black Suburban, but he knew it was there. "And that means we need to find another way across the river."

  Benny said, "I know a way."

  Chapter 44

  DEA Special Agent in Charge Robert Stockwell was sitting in his borrowed office, in his borrowed chair. The flat screen TV on the credenza was tuned to ESPN, the volume on mute. Stockwell wasn't paying attention to the television. He was staring out the window at downtown Laredo. It was an ugly city, he thought, brown, in more ways than one, with-ered, hot, dry, and dusty.

  Stockwell preferred the lushness and vibrancy of Hou-ston, but what he preferred even more was Virginia. He had already served two tours at DEA Headquarters in Spring-field, across the Potomac from Washington and just off the outer loop that circled the greater D.C. metro area. In fact, he still owned a house in Fairfax, four miles from headquar-ters. He'd had it on the rental market for the past six years, since the end of his last headquarters tour, but he hoped to move back into it soon.

  Stockwell's cell phone rang. It was lying face up on the desk. The caller ID showed a blocked number. That in itself wasn't unusual; a lot of government phones were blocked. Still, he liked to know who was calling him. Just those cou-ple of seconds of warning were usually enough to let him put on whatever game face he needed, whether it was the one he used for appeasing a superior at headquarters or the one he wore when he needed to chew out a subordinate. A blocked number presaged nothing, and thus he couldn't prepare.

  He answered the call in a neutral tone. "Stockwell."

  "We just missed him at the Gateway to the Americas Bridge," the voice said. "He tried to use an ATM, but by the time I got the alert and notified the team I had watching the bridge he was already gone."

  It was Jones. Or at least the man who called himself Jones. Those CIA spooks never used their real names. "He's a resourceful agent," Stockwell said.

  "I'm starting to realize that," Jones said. "Perhaps I un-derestimated him."

  That was not at all what Stockwell wanted to hear. He needed the CIA man to ti
e this thing off and tie it off quick-ly. Stockwell's rabbi at headquarters had promised him depu-ty chief of the Intelligence Division, with a bump up to chief when the current chief retired in six months, and Stockwell had already informed the people renting his house in Fairfax that he wasn't going to renew their lease because he was planning to move back.

  The promotion to intelligence chief would be the cap-stone to his career, guaranteeing that when he punched out he could roll right over into a lucrative contract gig with DEA and collect his retirement pay and a big contractor sala-ry. The train was on time and pulling out of the station, ex-cept for this fiasco with Greene and the three dead agents. Four if you counted Mike Cassidy.

  "What are you going to do?" Stockwell asked.

  "Are you aware that an hour ago Greene called your ASAC?"

  "No," Stockwell said, working hard to keep his voice in neutral. Inside, though, he was roiling. That fucking bastard Peterson. Meddling, even after Stockwell had warned him to stay clear. Well, if that's the way he wanted to play it, the buck didn't have to stop with Greene; it could stop with the ASAC, and if he lost his pension, so be it. But wait a minute. How did Jones know Greene had called Peterson? "You said Greene threw away his cell phone."

  "He did," Jones said. "Fortunately, we're up on your ASAC's phone."

  "You're running a title three on Glenn Peterson's phone?" Stockwell didn't like the sound of that at all. Coop-eration was one thing. Monitoring DEA phones was going entirely too far.

  "It's not a title three," Jones said. "We're not a law en-forcement agency. We don't use warrants."

  Stockwell pulled his phone away and looked at it. When he pressed it back to his ear he said, "What did they talk about?"

  "Enough to put Peterson in an adversarial position."

  "Adversarial to whom?"

  "The United States government."

  "I'm not Glenn Peterson's biggest fan," Stockwell said. "I've always felt he gets too close to his agents. But he is a patriot."

  "Have you seen the news?" Jones asked.

  The unexpected question threw Stockwell off balance. Probably as it was intended to do. "The news?" he said. "What news?"

  "The TV kind," Jones said. "Turn on CNN. They're running it again."

  Stockwell found the TV remote and switched from ESPN to CNN and turned on the sound. A pretty blond an-chor was reading a story, and behind her was a photograph of Scott Greene that looked like it had been lifted from his DEA credentials. Superimposed under the photo were the words MISSING AGENT.

  "...missing since yesterday," the news anchor said, "af-ter leading an illegal raid into Mexico to capture a fugitive wanted in connection with the abduction and murder of a DEA agent. Three more agents were killed yesterday on that raid. A DEA official said that Special Agent Scott Greene, who was only recently appointed as a supervisor in the agency's Houston Division, has been under internal investi-gation for several weeks. Agency investigators think Greene, who is married, may have fled to Mexico and might be in the company of this woman..." The photo behind the anchor switched to a head and shoulders shot of a beautiful Mexi-can woman. "...Benetta Alvarez, a Mexican Federal Police officer. The extent of the relationship between Greene and Al-varez is not known, according to the DEA official."

  Then the blond anchor's expression jumped from serious to happy and she began to read the lead of a heartwarming story about a sports star granting a dying child his dream wish. Stockwell punched the POWER button on the remote and turned off the TV. "What the hell was that?" he shouted into his phone.

  "Damage control," Jones said.

  "This is getting out of hand. Who authorized that press release? Who was the DEA official?"

  "Don't get your panties in a wad," Jones said. "I author-ized it, and I was the unnamed DEA official. This is nothing but cover."

  "Cover for what?"

  "For later."

  "When I agreed to help you, I didn't intend things to go this far. I have...other considerations."

  "You're still going to get the job as chief of intel, don't worry."

  "How do you know...?" Stockwell glanced again at his phone.

  "In a couple of hours this whole thing will be behind us. Just sit tight until I give you the all-clear sign."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "What you couldn't," Jones said. "Take care of it."

  The line went dead. Stockwell laid his cell phone down on the desk and stared at it.

  Chapter 45

  The car was old enough that it had manual locks, and some-one had left one of the back doors unlocked. Scott reached in and unlocked the driver's door and slid behind the steering wheel. He let Benny in on the passenger side, and she sat down beside him. They closed the doors and scrunched down in the front seat.

  It was a Pontiac Bonneville, late 80s or early 90s, parked on a quiet side street about ten blocks from the Gateway to the Americas Bridge. The vinyl upholstery was as brittle as an eggshell after decades of oven-like tempera-tures, and in the several places where the upholstery had split, mildewed foam stuffing poked out through the cracks.

  "Are you sure you know how to do this?" Benny asked.

  "Pretty sure," Scott said. Then he bent way over on the right side of the steering column and found a seam in the plastic covering. Using a rusted screwdriver with a broken handle that Benny had found in a garbage can, Scott pried open the steering column and broke the steering wheel lock. Then he jammed the flat tip of the screwdriver into the igni-tion and twisted what was left of the handle. The engine churned and eventually started.

  Scott looked at Benny and smiled. "Told you."

  They drove away.

  "Who taught you how to steal a car?" Benny asked.

  "When I was a patrolman in Dallas, I stopped a thirteen-year-old girl racing a stolen Cadillac Eldorado convertible down the Stemmons Freeway. I asked her how she got it started, and she showed me."

  "Did you arrest her?"

  "When I tracked down the owner of the car, he turned out to be a parolee who decided not to press charges once I told him about the pound of weed and the gun I found in the trunk."

  "So you let him go to save her?"

  "Something like that."

  "Why?"

  "She had a clean record, and I thought maybe if I gave her a break she would keep it that way."

  "Did she?"

  "No," Scott said as he steered around a slow-moving garbage truck. "I ran her name a year later and she'd been popped twice more."

  "That's too bad."

  He shrugged. "I gave her a chance."

  Benny pointed to the next right, a one-way street com-ing up on them fast. "Turn here."

  The steering was loose and the shocks were like marsh-mallows, so when Scott jerked the wheel over, the Bonne-ville floated through the turn so softly that it almost smacked the far curb. Once he got the big land yacht straightened out and stepped on the gas, the engine sounded more like a vacuum cleaner than an automobile.

  "And all these years later," Benny said, "you still re-member how to crack a steering column and jimmy an igni-tion?"

  He nodded. "I thought it might come in handy."

  "Turn here," Benny said and pointed to the next left.

  Scott wobbled through the turn. "Where are we going?"

  "Straight," Benny said.

  He gave her a look but didn't say anything.

  "Did you always want to be a policeman?" she asked.

  "No," Scott said. "I thought I was going to law school."

  "What happened?"

  "My senior year of college I went to what's called Ca-reer Day, just to see what my options were, and I stopped at a table and talked to a couple of Dallas cops. What they did seemed a lot more exciting than law school."

  "Do you ever regret it?"

  "Not going to law school?"

  She nodded.

  "No," he said. "But my wife does. And my father."

  "Is he a lawyer?"

  "He's a partne
r at a big firm in Dallas. He always thought I would join the firm. I guess I did too. Even after I became a cop I thought about it. It wasn't too late. Then I got on with DEA and that was pretty much it."

  Benny directed him through another turn. Scott was hopelessly lost. "Where are you taking me?" he said.

  "You'll see."

  "I'm not crazy about surprises."

  "You want to get across the river, don't you?"

  He was about to respond when he spotted a payphone at a corner store. When he hit the brakes the pedal went almost to the floor, but he was able to bang the car to a stop at the curb.

  "What are you doing?" Benny asked.

  "I need to let Glenn know I'm going to be late." He threw the gearshift into park and opened the door. Then he turned back to Benny. "You have any change?"

  She didn't, but they searched the car and found several coins in the ashtray. A moment later, Scott dropped ten pe-sos into the telephone's coin slot and dialed the ASAC's cell number. After four rings, Peterson's voicemail picked up. "This is Assistant Special Agent in Charge Glenn Peterson. I can't answer my phone now. Please leave a message." The line beeped.

  "Glenn, it's me," Scott said. "I ran into some trouble getting across. A couple of Americans, spook types, maybe contractors, had the Convent Street Bridge staked out. I have to assume they're watching all the bridges, so I'm working on an alternate method of crossing right now. I'll definitely be there. I'm just not sure when. I'm on a payphone. I had to ditch my cell. So I'll be off the grid for a while, but I'll be there as soon as I can."

  As he hung up the phone Scott happened to glance in the store window and saw his own face looking back at him from a television behind the counter. He stared through the glass. The TV station must be on the American side because the words MISSING AGENT were plastered just beneath his picture. Then his face was replaced by a photo of Benny.

  Scott turned around and walked back to the car, keep-ing his face angled down, sure that someone on the street was going to recognize him.

  "What's wrong?" Benny asked as soon as he slid behind the wheel and shut the door. He had kept the motor running. The screwdriver trick had started it once. There was no need to tempt fate.