She would just have to start over, she had told herself. It wouldn’t be the first time. She had run for her life before and been forced to leave everything behind.
Figuring that the cartel men would be watching the bridge, she hid out until nearly dawn, then joined the throng of women trudging toward the border, bound for their factory and domestic jobs in Del Rio. Catalina figured her clothes were suitable for a factory job. She untied the knot in the shirttails and let the shirt fall loosely around her. She pulled her hair into a ponytail and hoped that and the different shirt she wore might be enough to keep them from recognizing her.
Also, as far as she knew there were no photographs of her in the apartment. She had never liked having her picture taken. So all the searchers would have to go by was her description: a woman in her twenties with brown hair, five-six, athletic build. That would fit many of the women who walked along the street with her. All she could do was hope to blend in.
It took nearly an hour for the long line to work its way across the border, and every minute that went by seemed like a nerve-wracking eternity to Catalina.
No one seemed to be paying any attention to her, though, and since her work permit was legitimate, she had no trouble getting across. Finally she was on American soil.
That made her feel slightly better . . . but only slightly. The cartel had plenty of people working for it in Del Rio, and it was possible that all of them were on the lookout for her.
Also, the bridge had security cameras mounted on it, and for all she knew, the cartel would be able to get the feed from those cameras and study it, looking for her. She knew that Marty had been perfectly capable of doing things like that, and she supposed the cartel had other computer experts who could do the same. They were barbarians, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t take advantage of modern technology.
No, even in another country, it was only a matter of time until they caught up with her, she thought. She was still doomed, unless she could find someone to help her.
She tied up the shirt again, unbuttoned the top two buttons, and kept an eye on the trucks passing her until she spotted one where the driver was eyeing her with undisguised lust. She waved and smiled at him, and the truck’s air brakes hissed as he slowed down and pulled over.
“You need a ride?” he called through the open window to her.
“Oh, no,” she said with a coy smile. “I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble.”
“It won’t be any trouble. Come on. I’ll help you out . . . and maybe you can help me out.” He frowned suddenly, as if something had occurred to him. “You’re not a cop, are you?”
She laughed and asked, “Do I look like a cop to you?”
“That doesn’t answer the question,” he said, his voice hardening.
“No,” Catalina said. “I’m not a cop.”
He had picked up prostitutes before, she thought. He didn’t want to get caught up in any sort of police sting. Well, she couldn’t really blame him for that, and she sure as hell couldn’t judge him considering some of the things she’d done, she told herself.
He grinned and nodded, motioning for her to get in. She climbed up, opened the door, and slid onto the seat. It was a relief when the truck started rolling again, moving away from the border.
She had already figured out that she couldn’t run fast enough or far enough on her own to escape from the cartel. She needed to call the number Marty had given her and get in touch with the Americans.
The truck driver’s name was Eddie Velez. He had a wedding band on his ring finger, and he was short and pudgy, with a sweet, innocent, round face. Maybe not so innocent, though, because right away he started trying to sound her out about what she was willing to do in return for the ride he was giving her.
Catalina dodged the questions as best she could, but after ten miles or so when she saw a dirt road leading off to the east from the highway, she said, “Turn in there, Eddie. I’d like to get out and stretch my legs a little.”
“You just got in the truck a few—” he began, then stopped short with his eyes widening as he realized what she meant. “Oh! Oh, yeah, sure, Angie.”
She had given him the first phony name she thought of, Angie Rodriguez. Under the circumstances, he wasn’t just about to ask her for ID to prove who she really was.
Eddie drove for a couple of miles after leaving the highway. The road was pretty rough, but the truck had no trouble handling it. Catalina worried a little that it might bog down in the sand when she tried to turn around, but she would deal with that when and if she had to.
When they were well out of sight of the highway, she’d said, “This is far enough,” and Eddie stopped the truck and turned to her with an expectant grin on his face . . .
A grin that vanished when he saw the gun in her hand.
Now she was on her way back. Back into the belly of the beast, she thought, unsure where the phrase had come from or why it had popped into her head.
And all she could do was hope that someone would be able to keep that beast from consuming her.
CHAPTER 7
Sonora, Texas
The cell phone in Bill’s pocket buzzed while he was sitting in a diner beside the highway, washing down a cheeseburger and French fries with a chocolate milkshake. An all-American meal for an all-American boy, he had thought when he ordered it. Well, all except for the French fries, he supposed, and he’d decided that the French had long since given up any legitimate claim to them, the same way they’d given up everything else.
No number came up on the phone’s screen. That didn’t bode well, but it didn’t have to mean anything, either, Bill told himself. He considered telling the phone to ignore the call, but in his experience, postponing unpleasant things seldom made them any better in the long run.
He thumbed the button to answer the phone and said, “What the hell do you want?”
“How’d you know it was me?” a familiar voice came back.
“I just figured since I was sittin’ here enjoyin’ a good meal, only a real asshole would interrupt it, and that just naturally made me think of you, Clark.”
That brought a chuckle from the man on the other end of the call.
“Yeah, we’ve all missed you around here, too, buddy boy. Where are you?”
“Sonora.”
“Mexico?”
“No, Texas.”
“Let me look that up . . .”
“I’ll save you the trouble,” Bill said. “It’s about halfway between Odessa and San Antonio. I thought I’d go take a look at the Alamo. I hear they’ve got all the damage from the battle cleaned up now.”
“Well, they should. That was in 18—Wait a minute, you’re talking about that big mess a few years ago when somebody came up with the bright idea of giving it back to the Mexicans?”
“She who shall not be named,” Bill drawled.
“Yeah, well, she wasn’t as bad as the guy who came after her, was she?”
“You didn’t call me up to talk political history, Clark. What do you want?”
Clark said, “Oh, wait, there’s Sonora. I’ve got it up on the computer now. Well, that’s convenient. You’re just a hop, skip, and a jump away from Del Rio.”
“Two things,” Bill said. “Not much of anything in Texas is just a hop, skip, and a jump away from anything else, and the only people who even use that expression anymore are old geezers like you and me.”
“Maybe, but the important thing is, you’re only about a hundred and fifty miles away from Del Rio. You can be there before tonight without any trouble.”
“And why in the hell would I want to go to Del Rio?”
“Because,” Clark said, “there’s a package there we need you to retrieve.”
Bill sat in the diner booth with its throwback red Naugahyde seats for a long moment without saying anything, so long that Clark finally asked him if he was still there.
“I’m here,” Bill said. “And I don’t do that kind of work anymore.”
/> “Look, this is important—”
“It always is. At least, guys like you claim it is. Everything’s a matter of life and death with you.”
“That’s just the thing,” Clark said softly. “By the time a problem gets to us, it usually is a matter of life and death.”
Bill leaned back and pushed the plate away. He had lost his appetite, which was a damn shame because the food had been good.
“I’m retired.”
“You tried that a long time ago. Went back to that little town where you grew up, bought yourself a house, and tried to settle down. Didn’t exactly work out, did it?”
That was putting it mildly. Bill never let himself think much about those days, but even now, whenever he heard piano music it sent a little shiver through him.
He had never told anybody about that. All Clark and his other associates knew was that something disturbing had happened, something that eventually had made Bill give up his goal of retiring. He had gone back to work for a while, this time not as a freelancer or a government contractor, but as an employee of Hiram Stackhouse, the multibillionaire behind the chain of discount stores that could be found in almost every town in the country.
Stackhouse’s security forces were large, well-trained, and well-equipped. Politicians of a certain stripe had been known to complain that Stackhouse might as well be fielding his own private army.
What those politicians didn’t know—and probably wouldn’t have cared about if they did—was that Hiram Stackhouse was a patriot through and through and only employed his security forces for the good of the country. Without them, in fact, a lot of innocent people would have died in several incidents involving foreign terrorists trying to strike again in American soil.
Bill had played a small part in dealing with one of those incidents, and he had handled other, similar chores for Stackhouse, but after several years he’d had enough of that, too. He had spent most of the time since then traveling.
Until now.
“I refuse to believe you don’t have anybody else down here in this part of the country who can handle this job,” he told Clark. “How hard can it be to pick up a package?”
“You’d be surprised. There are other people who want what’s in that package, too.”
This sort of oblique conversation was a habit with men like him and Clark, Bill knew. His cell phone was a burner; Clark shouldn’t have even been able to get the number. And Bill was sure the phone on Clark’s end of the line was as untraceable and un-tappable as a tin can with a string tied to it. But that didn’t stop them from talking around the real subject.
The “package” was probably a person who had information about something Clark considered vital. Maybe it really was. Somebody else obviously thought so, too, or they wouldn’t be trying to get their hands on it. That meant danger was involved, because a lot of times the sort of people they dealt with would kill to keep information from getting out.
All of it was ugly, messy, and dirty as far as Bill was concerned, and he’d had his fill of it. He was about to say so when Clark went on, “The two guys who sent the package our way have dropped off the grid, Bill. You know what that means.”
Sure he did.
“And as for the package . . . she’s a young woman.”
Bill’s jaw tightened. It wasn’t like Clark to be so straightforward about anything. He was really pulling out all the stops in trying to get Bill on board with this operation.
With a sigh, he asked, “You say she’s in Del Rio?”
“Yeah, but I’m not exactly sure where. She’s going to call again tonight and set up a meet.”
“You realize this sounds like a trap of some sort?”
“Of course it does. But Heimdall has picked up some chatter from the sandbox in the past few weeks about something big being imminent. Maybe bigger than 9/11.”
“That’s what they always say,” Bill pointed out. “You know those types over there in that part of the world. They like to think they’re the Big Bad and they’re gonna be the ones to bring the Great Satan to its knees.”
“Maybe. All indications are that the threat is a credible one, though.”
“So how does some señorita in Del Rio, Texas, find out anything about it?”
“Don’t know, but she mentioned a phrase that Heimdall has picked up a few times. El Nuevo Sol.”
“The New Sun,” Bill muttered. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, old buddy-roo. If you pick up this package for us, maybe we’ll both find out.”
“Hold on,” Bill said. He set the phone on the table and closed his eyes. He rubbed his temples and thought.
Heimdall was the name of the computer program that monitored electronic communications worldwide. Earlier versions had had other names, but Heimdall—in Norse mythology, the all-seeing, all-hearing, all-knowing guardian of the Rainbow Bridge between Earth and Asgard—was the most advanced yet. Bill shouldn’t have even known it existed.
Everything Clark said just made the situation more ominous. It was easy to dismiss most threats originating in the Middle East. The various terrorist organizations were well-funded, no doubt about that, with oil money flowing to them from their countrymen and, recently, drug money as well from newfound allies in South and Central America. Bill knew for a fact that there were ties between Islamic terrorism and the drug cartels in Mexico. So it was possible that the trail of this New Sun, whatever it was, might stretch from one side of the world to the other and end up in Del Rio.
“Are you finished with that, hon?”
The voice of the waitress broke into his thoughts. He glanced up and saw her standing beside the booth, a carafe of coffee in one hand as she looked questioningly at his plate with the remains of his lunch on it.
“Yeah,” Bill said. “You can take it.”
“You want a to-go container?”
“No thanks. I don’t believe I’ll want the rest of it.”
“How about a cup of coffee?”
Bill thought for a second and then asked, “Can I get that to go?”
“You sure can. I’ll be right back with it, along with your check.”
When the waitress was gone, Bill picked up the phone and said, “Del Rio, huh?”
“Yeah,” Clark said. “Buy another burner and call me with the number. Then she can call you and tell you where to meet her.”
“She gonna have bogeys on her tail?”
“I won’t lie to you, Bill. It’s possible.”
“A hundred grand in my Caymans account.”
Clark whistled and said, “That’s a little steep.”
“No, it’s not, and you damn well know it. I thought about asking for five hundred.”
“I could just appeal to your patriotism.”
“You could,” Bill agreed.
A sigh came from the other end of the phone.
“It’s not like the old days, is it?”
“Nothin’ ever is,” Bill said.
CHAPTER 8
Ciudad Acuña
Alfredo Sanchez closed the laptop and sighed.
“This is all your men found?” he asked. He waved a hand at the laptop and the desktop computer on the table in front of him.
“That’s it,” Pablo replied with a shrug. “Well, as far as the computers go, anyway. They found some money, wrapped up in plastic and hidden in the toilet tank.” He laughed humorlessly. “They probably thought about not mentioning that, then decided not to risk it. They know what I would do to them if I found out. The money added up to nearly eighty thousand dollars, American.”
Alfredo pursed his lips and nodded.
“That proves Chavez was double-crossing us. He was taking payoffs from the Americans and feeding them information.”
As always, Alfredo kept a tight rein on his emotions and didn’t allow his face to reveal what he was feeling, but a little worm of panic was wriggling around inside his belly. Chavez might have ruined everything.
“God knows what he might have told them,” Alfredo added.
“Maybe the girl knows,” Pablo suggested. He placed a stack of photographs on the table in front of Alfredo. “My men found these as well.”
Alfredo picked up the pictures and flipped through them. They were all similar, shots taken in a small bathroom while a very well-built young woman undressed and stepped into the shower. Judging by her attitude, she hadn’t known that the camera was there.
“This is Chavez’s girlfriend?” Alfredo asked. “The stripper?”
“Yeah,” Pablo said, and despite the dire circumstances, he grinned. “Doesn’t seem possible, does it? What’s the gringo word? A nerd like him?”
Alfredo nodded slowly and said, “He had that money hidden, remember? I imagine that was all the girl was really interested in.” He came to his feet. “We need to find her.”
“You really think she knows anything? You think Chavez would have confided in her?”
“Maybe, maybe not. But he might have told her things, trying to impress her with how important he was. And she might have heard or seen something that could help us, whether Chavez meant for her to or not.” Alfredo tapped a finger on the stack of photos. “Find the best shot of her face in these and have copies made. I want them in the hands of all our people in Acuña and Del Rio as soon as possible.”
“You think she got across the border?”
“According to the witnesses, she killed three of our men,” Alfredo said heavily. “Obviously, they weren’t three of our best . . . but I’m not going to put anything past her.”
“She’s just a dumb stripper and whore!”
“Perhaps, but she’s still a potential danger.”
Pablo nodded and said, “I’ll take care of it, Alfredo.”
“See that you do.”
Before either of them could say anything else, one of the guards came in, a machine gun cradled in his hands.
“The Arab wants to speak to you, Señor Sanchez,” the man said.
Again Alfredo made an effort to not reveal his honest reaction. The man who had shown up at the villa this morning worried him. Alfredo was truly fanatical about only one thing: money. Those who pursued other goals with the passion of a true believer could not be trusted, to his way of thinking.
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