Cartel

by Chuck Hustmyre

  "We were on television," Scott said as he stepped on the brake and yanked the gearshift down into drive.

  "What do you mean?"

  Scott pointed at the store. Through the window he could see the light from the TV screen, but he could no longer make out what was on it. "On the TV inside the store. I could see it from the payphone. Some kind of news broad-cast. There were photos of both of us."

  "Oh, my God," Benny said. "I've got to get Rosalita."

  Scott pulled the Pontiac away from the curb. "We need to stick to the plan. It's even more important now that you get out of Mexico and don't come back."

  "I can't leave her here."

  "We'll get her out," he said. "I promise."

  Chapter 46

  Mr. Jones pulled his BlackBerry from the inside pocket of his suit jacket and set it on the table beside his coffee. He had been living on nothing but caffeine and nicotine for two days. Not that it mattered. After surviving a bout with stom-ach cancer, he no longer ate much anyway. His doctor had seen to that by cutting out a big chunk of his GI tract and blasting the rest with radiation. If he added candy bars-he preferred Milky Ways-to his diet of coffee and cigarettes, he could survive a week on what he thought of as the three C's of good nutrition.

  Mr. Jones stared at his half-empty coffee cup. He need-ed a cigarette. Except he couldn't have one because coffee and a cigarette were impossible to have at the same time, es-pecially indoors and certainly not in a coffee shop.

  In fact, other than in your own home, the only legal place left to simultaneously enjoy those two former staples of American life was in a parking lot, at least thirty feet from the nearest door, lest some sissy walking past catch a whiff of your secondhand smoke and drop dead on the spot. Which basically meant that if you wanted to smoke you had to stand next to the Dumpster.

  Just thinking about it made him mad. He despised what passed for coffee shops these days. All of them smoke-free, gluten-free, lactose-free, sugar-free, soon probably even caf-feine-free, environmentally-friendly postmodern monuments to self-absorption.

  Banning cigarettes from coffee shops was like banning ketchup from hamburger joints or mustard from hotdog stands. It was downright un-American. If these crybaby tree huggers were so afraid of catching cancer from someone else's smoke or getting fat from standing to close to a dozen donuts, they should stay the fuck home. Because Mr. Jones wasn't afraid. He hadn't caught his cancer by proxy. He'd earned it the old-fashioned way, by smoking, drinking, and eating shit that was bad for him.

  So he would finish his coffee inside, then smoke a ciga-rette in the comfort of his car. Maybe smoke more than one. And take his revenge against the pansy executives who ran all the corporate coffee shop chains the only way he knew how, by dumping his makeshift ashtray-a Styrofoam cof-fee cup, since cars didn't come with real ashtrays anymore-in the parking lot.

  But first he had to make a phone call, a phone call that he was somewhat reluctant to make. He wasn't a monster. Or a psychopath. He had feelings. He knew remorse. He had even been married once, and he supposed that he had, in his own way, loved his wife. The subject of the phone call Mr. Jones needed to make had never done anything to him. Jones had never even met him. The man was just in the way, standing between Jones and his mission objective.

  Mr. Jones picked up his BlackBerry and dialed.

  Gavin answered on the second ring.

  "Is your man ready?" Jones asked.

  "Roger that," Gavin said.

  Jones found Gavin's frequent use of military radio jar-gon while on the telephone annoying. "Have him proceed then."

  There was the briefest of pauses before Gavin respond-ed, "Will do."

  Jones was an expert at reading people. Body language, eye movement, and micro-facial expressions were the most reliable indicators of what people really meant when they spoke, but in the absence of those indicators the choice and delivery of the actual words spoken, including tiny pauses like the one he had just heard, was still highly indicative of true meaning. "I sense a degree of hesitation on your part," Jones said.

  "I wouldn't call it hesitation."

  Of course, to Jones's attuned ear, the words themselves were a crescendo of inner conflict on the part of the former soldier. Which surprised him, because nothing in Gavin's ac-tions up to that point, or in his service record, indicated he had any conscience at all. "What is it then?" Jones asked.

  "Concern."

  "Over?"

  "Over the fact that I think we might be about to unleash something we're not going to be able to control."

  "You're concerned about the subsequent investigation?"

  "Aren't you?"

  "It's not what they know," Jones said. "It's what they can prove. And they won't be able to prove anything."

  "Assuming my man gets out clean."

  "Do you doubt his abilities?"

  "Absolutely not."

  "Then what's the problem?" Jones asked.

  "Are you completely comfortable with this?"

  "Are you asking from a moral perspective or from an operational one?"

  "Either. Both, I guess."

  "Agent Greene has the video and he's in the wind," Jones said. "Fortunately, we know where he's going. There-fore, we have the advantage. To not use that advantage would be a mistake."

  "Is that a yes?"

  "Yes," Jones said. "That is a definite yes. I'm complete-ly comfortable with the plan. It's the next logical step to achieve our objective."

  "And you think this step will do it?" Gavin asked. "This will get us what we want so we can finally wrap this up and move the fuck on?"

  Remembering Murphy and his immutable law, Jones was circumspect. "I do," he said. "But you know as well as I do that nothing ever goes exactly according to the plan, which is why the government spends so much time and money training men like us to improvise, adapt, and over-come."

  "Roger that," Gavin said and hung up.

  Mr. Jones drank the dregs of his coffee and stared at the empty cup. He really needed a cigarette.

  Chapter 47

  Scott drove the stolen Pontiac Bonneville through a decrepit industrial park on the northern edge of Nuevo Laredo. They were close enough to the river that he caught glimpses of it between the buildings. "Where are we going?"

  "Across the river," Benny said.

  Low-slung metal buildings lined the street, most with cheap signs and small parking lots. Scott could only under-stand a few of the Spanish words on the signs, but this part of Nuevo Laredo seemed to be the place to be if you were in the market for rebuilt car parts, used tires, or scrap metal. The parking lots were nearly empty, and the few cars he did see were mostly old rust buckets like the Bonneville they were driving.

  A block ahead, one business stood out. A single-story metal building that was just as depressing as all of its neigh-bors, but its parking lot held several shiny new American cars.

  Benny pointed at it. "Pull over before we get to that building."

  Scott eased off the gas and let the Bonneville coast. A half-block from the building he nudged the brakes and pulled to the curb. "Now what?"

  "Wait here."

  "Wait for what?"

  Benny unbuttoned the top two buttons of her blouse and pushed her boobs up. Scott couldn't help but stare. "What are you doing?" he asked.

  She pulled her pistol from under her jacket and pressed the slide back a quarter-inch to verify that a round was seat-ed in the chamber. Then she checked the load in the maga-zine.

  "How many do you have left?" Scott asked.

  "Five," she said. "Plus one in the chamber." Then she slipped the pistol back into the holster under her jacket. "Give me sixty seconds. Or until you hear the first gunshot."

  "What?"

  Benny jumped out of the car without answering, and Scott watched her strut toward the building like she didn't have a care in the world. When she reached the door, she pounded on it with the bottom of her fist. Scott could hear the thuds through the open drive
r's window even at this dis-tance. It sounded like she was beating on heavy-gauge steel. He saw her look up, as if toward a security camera. Then she was talking. Probably into an intercom.

  Scott glanced at his watch. Thirty-five seconds had elapsed. The door opened. A man stood in the doorway. Benny said something to him. The man said something back. Then he stepped aside and Benny walked past him. The door closed. But not all the way. A crease of light that hadn't been there before shone along the edge. The boobs had probably distracted the poor dumb bastard, Scott thought, and Benny had left the door cracked. Scott stepped out of the car and checked his watch. Fifty seconds.

  A gunshot echoed inside the building.

  Chapter 48

  Scott sprinted toward the building, covering the half-block in ten seconds, and hit the door hard, counting on that crease of light to mean he wasn't going to bounce off with a broken collarbone. As he had suspected, the door was, in fact, made of heavy-gauge steel, but he was also correct that Benny had left it open for him. So when Scott plowed through the door he found himself inside a small, cluttered warehouse.

  A burst of automatic gunfire erupted to Scott's right front, and he dropped to the rough concrete floor, half-tumbling, half-sliding up against a wooden pallet stacked with small plastic-wrapped packages. He didn't have time to see what was in them because his eyes were drawn to a dead man lying five feet away.

  The man had apparently only just recently been shot in the face. He lay on his back, eyes open, wearing dirty blue jeans and a filthy brown T-shirt. The bullet had punched through his face just to the left of his nose. The edges of the wound were scorched black and ringed with stippling, indi-cating a close-contact shot. The back of his head rested in a gelatinous ooze of blood and bright pink brain matter that was still spreading across the concrete. An AK-47 lay on the floor next to him, and a Glock pistol was tucked into the front of his jeans.

  Another burst of gunfire exploded across the ware-house, and Scott heard bullets striking the concrete floor and whizzing over his head. Almost immediately the burst was answered by several pistol shots fired close to Scott. He peeked around the pallet and saw Benny twenty feet in front of him, proned-out on the floor behind a similarly-stacked pallet. Only now, Scott could see that the small plastic-wrapped packages piled on top of both pallets were kilos of cocaine.

  "Are you okay?" Scott said in a loud whisper.

  "Fine," Benny said, "but I'm almost out of bullets."

  "Hold on," Scott said and crawled to the dead man. He grabbed the AK-47 and yanked the Glock from the man's jeans. "Take this," Scott said and slid the Glock across the floor to Benny.

  Scott eased back the bolt on the AK-47 enough to see a round in the chamber. Then he pulled out the thirty-round magazine and found it full. The guy hadn't gotten a single shot off. Scott jammed the magazine back into the gun and scanned the warehouse. It was packed with dozens of identical pallets and several pieces of heavy equipment. He was in a warehouse full of cocaine.

  More bullets ripped across the warehouse. Scott aimed in the general direction they were coming from and fired back. The assault rifle was set to full-automatic and before Scott realized it he had fired off half a magazine. Benny fired her Beretta until the slide locked back. Then she switched to the Glock.

  More shots came from the other side of the warehouse. Scott thumbed the selector switch to semi-auto and fired three shots at where he thought the gunman was. Then he scurried across the twenty feet of open floor to Benny. "What the fuck is going on?"

  She pointed toward where the gunman was hiding. "He's standing on top of our way across the river."

  Scott had no idea what she was talking about and be-fore he got the chance to ask, the gunman opened up again and his bullets blew apart several packages of cocaine and spewed white powder across the floor. Then the gun he was firing clicked. Scott knew that sound. It was the bolt slam-ming home on an empty chamber. The magazine was empty. Benny knew it too because she was on her feet and charging. "Follow me," she shouted.

  And even before Scott had a chance to think about it, he was on his feet and running. Then a man popped up on his right, thirty feet away with a pistol in his hand. Scott twisted and fired. He kept moving, trying to run sideways, but his body was in an awkward position and he missed several shots. Then he saw flashes of light erupt from the muzzle of the man's pistol and felt the air crack around his head as the bullets passed him.

  Scott kept jerking the trigger of the AK-47 until his bul-lets tore through the man's stomach. Wet entrails, like greased rope, exploded from his abdomen. The man dropped his pistol and grabbed at his spewing insides for several sec-onds; then he collapsed.

  Scott kept running, following Benny, unsure how many rounds he had left, hoping like hell for more than one. Then he saw the original shooter standing in front of him, trying to shove a fresh magazine into his rifle. Scott couldn't shoot because Benny was in his line of fire, charging straight at the man, Glock pistol extended in front of her. The gunman fumbled loading the new magazine and had to try again. The second time he got it seated properly and banged it into place with the heel of his hand, then ripped the bolt back to chamber a round.

  Benny was ten yards from the man and still charging at him when she opened fire. POP, POP, POP, POP, POP. Three of her five shots hit him in the chest and neck. He crumpled to the floor. Benny stopped firing and stopped running. Her face was chalk white and she was gasping for breath. She bent over, braced her hands on her knees, and vomited on the concrete floor.

  A gunshot echoed from their left. Scott turned and raised the AK-47. Benny sank to one knee but aimed her pis-tol in the direction of the shot. There was another gunshot, but no rounds were coming at them. They heard a banging sound, like someone kicking metal. Then another gunshot and another bang. Then a rectangle of light split open in the far wall, and they saw the silhouette of a man dart out of a door and heard running footsteps. Whoever he was he had just shot and kicked his way out of the building.

  "Are you all right?" Scott asked.

  Benny nodded and rose to her feet.

  "Then you better explain what just happened."

  Benny wiped a sleeve across her mouth and pointed to-ward the man she had just killed. He had fallen beside an electric hoist that straddled an eight-foot by eight-foot square hole cut through the concrete floor. The earth beneath the floor had been excavated and an aluminum extension ladder dropped down into the hole. A thick steel cable ran from a spool at the base of the hoist up through a pulley and down into the hole.

  "What is this?" Scott said.

  "A tunnel," Benny said. "Under the river."

  Scott stepped to the edge of the hole and looked down. It was twenty feet deep, with wooden slats reinforcing the dirt sides. The steel cable was attached to a harness, and the harness was connected to a wooden pallet. The pallet sat on a flatbed cart that looked to be powered by an electric motor. And stacked on top of the pallet were at least 200 kilos of cocaine.

  Scott turned to Benny. "How did you know about this?"

  She pointed to the open door the last man had escaped through. "He's already made his phone call. We have to hur-ry."

  Scott stared at the open door. She had a point. The only way out was to keep going. He looked back at Benny. "What's on the other side?"

  "A building like this one."

  "And more men?"

  "Probably."

  "Then we need weapons," he said.

  They looted the dead. Scott picked up a pistol and Ben-ny took a rifle. They scavenged extra magazines. Then stood again at the edge of the hole.

  "You ready?" Scott asked.

  Benny nodded.

  Scott slung the AK-47 across his back and tucked a Glock 9mm into his waistband. Then he climbed down the aluminum ladder.

  Benny followed him.

  Chapter 49

  The tunnel was eight feet tall and six feet wide. It ran north on a downward slope, and the floor was laid with a set of narrow-g
auge steel rails. The flatbed cart on which the mound of cocaine sat had steel wheels that fit the rails.

  There was no way to control the hoist from inside the hole, so Scott pulled the pin that connected the hoist cable to the pallet's harness. Then Benny clambered over the pile of cocaine to the front of the cart where a metal post stood, on top of which was mounted a small control console with a lever protruding from it. The lever looked like the throttle on a boat, and Scott thought that it must control the forward and backward movement of the cart.

  Benny glanced back at him. "Are you ready?"

  "Ready as I'll ever be," he said.

  Benny shoved the lever down and the cart lurched for-ward, almost toppling Scott off the back. He only managed to stay onboard by grabbing onto the stack of cocaine to steady himself. The cart accelerated to what Scott guessed was about fifteen miles per hour, which on a city street might seem barely above a crawl, but starting at twenty feet underground in a makeshift tunnel and going even deeper to pass beneath a river, it seemed to Scott like they were flying.

  Linked extension cords strung along the tunnel powered work lights spaced out every fifty yards, leaving enough of a gap between them so that when the cart was near the mid-point between two lights, it spent several seconds traversing through darkness.

  "You should have told me what you were planning," Scott said, almost having to shout to be heard above the grinding of the steel wheels on the rails.

  Benny turned to look at him. "If I had, what would you have said?"

  "I would have said no. That we could find another way."

  "There was no other way."

  They rode in silence for a few minutes. Then Scott felt the angle of their descent getting shallower. Soon it flattened out and the air became cold and damp. As they passed one of the lights, he could see the mud and rock wall was wet with condensation. They were deep under the river, near the halfway point and close to the U.S. border. He looked at the stacked kilos of cocaine. He was still leaning on them for balance. "I'm a DEA agent," he said, "and I'm smuggling a couple hundred kilos of cocaine into the United States."