PRECIPICE

by Leland Davis

  A few minutes later they pulled the trucks into the shadowy, tree lined courtyard of the Hotel Valles. Carlos went in and rented three air conditioned rooms for the team. After they cleaned up and settled in, they headed out to find another dinner, joining in the local culture which usually dined around 9 or 10 at night. Chip was more reserved than normal, although he was glad to finally have a beer along with his dinner. He feared that they were here too early, and the responsibility was all going to fall on him. Tomorrow they would find out.

  10

  Monday, November 14th

  MOORE THOUGHT A bit of fresh air would do him good, so he decided to walk outside and across the street to the Dirksen Senate Office Building instead of taking the tunnel. The chill was bracing as he strode down the marble stairs outside, and it cooled him enough that he didn’t break a sweat on the climb up to the third floor. The homeland security meeting today was on Mexican border issues, and Ortiz had insisted that Moore be there to speak up if the conversation turned to quashing the international trucking bill. Most of the party hard-liners would use any means necessary to stop Mexican trucks and drivers from freely crossing the border, and the threat of the drug trade was as good a reason as any they had found.

  He entered room 342 and eased his large frame into his usual blue leather chair behind the long, semi-circular desk and next to the portly Senator Craig from Texas. It would be a long morning. Craig chaired the committee and was sure to be one of the fiercest opponents of the trucking bill. The two southern senators had traditionally been friends and political allies, and Moore hoped that this issue wouldn’t be the fly in the ointment that soured their friendship. He’d enjoyed a couple of great hunting trips in southwest Texas with Craig and even once shot a nice javelina—a fierce native hog—down there. Its head was mounted on the wall of his house in Alabama, much to the chagrin of his wife on the rare occasion that he could convince her to join him there. She wouldn’t even allow him a photo of any of his kills in the DC house, except in his private bathroom and his study.

  Craig called the meeting to order with a few opening remarks and then kicked it off by inviting the first person to testify. A seemingly endless parade of major and minor players in immigration and law enforcement stepped to the witness table in front of the curved desk one after another to speak and answer questions from the committee. Moore tuned it out. His days were numbered here, and all he really cared about now was anything that specifically pertained to the trucking bill.

  An interminable hour-and-a-half later, he was almost dozing during a presentation from the Executive Associate Director for Homeland Security Investigations. The lights were dimmed, and slides were being shown on a large flat panel screen in one corner of the room behind the desk at which he sat. The HSI guy was droning on about the various cartels who were moving drugs across the border, lamenting the fact that the shipments were so broken up when they crossed that they were usually only intercepted by law enforcement one kilo at a time. Furthermore, the poor mules that got caught were innocent immigrant workers—mostly women—who had been severely abused and then forced to carry the drugs. The feds had failed to take out a single serious player in months. It was of no interest to Moore—migrant workers who got busted muling drugs would not be taking precious jobs from the people of his state. The more that got arrested, deported, or killed, the better.

  “We have, however,” the EAD continued with more authority and enthusiasm as he reached the highlight of his presentation, “learned the identity of the man who we believe is in charge of one of the largest and most brutal cartels.”

  The slide changed to a photo of a fit Latino man in his mid-forties with cropped black hair and a thick moustache sloping down sharply over his mouth. He was flanked by two serious-looking men in shades, walking toward a gold SUV.

  “This is Vicente Guerra Cardenas,” the EAD continued, “the man who we believe is the current leader of the Leones del Oriente drug cartel.”

  Startled to full alertness by the familiar name, Moore sat up and swiveled his head around sharply for a better view of the screen. Surely it couldn’t be the same Vicente Cardenas. As he examined the slide, a sinking feeling came over him. Aside from a long ponytail, one of the men in shades behind the drug lord bore a striking resemblance to the senator’s chief of staff. Could this be the elusive cousin he had heard so much about?

  “We believe his organization is responsible for roughly sixty-five percent of the drugs that cross the border from Mexico into the U.S.,” the EAD continued.

  “Not for long,” Senator Craig covered his microphone with his hand and mumbled cryptically under his breath in the direction of his old friend Moore. He’d decided that subtle hints to colleagues from his network was the best way to try to drum up more business for Export Logistics while still maintaining deniability, and Sheldon Moore was definitely a good’ol’boy. If the mission were successful, it wouldn’t hurt to have a few whispers on the Hill that Craig was the man who had gotten it done.

  The EAD continued, “This picture was taken two years ago outside of his home in the city of Monterrey. We’ve had the house under surveillance, but he hasn’t been seen there in some time. We’re currently working to ascertain his whereabouts, but we’re not sure where he’s been for almost a year now.”

  “Oh, we know,” Craig whispered with a smug wink at Moore in the dimly lit room. “He won’t be a problem next week.” Craig couldn’t resist sharing just a little bit of his secret with someone. He’d worked hard and invested a lot to make this happen. The team was already deployed. It would happen any day now.

  Moore felt like he was going to be sick. It suddenly made too much sense why he was being paid millions to push through a trucking bill, and the abrupt clarity threatened to overwhelm him. His new patron wasn’t a trucking magnate; he was a drug lord. How could Moore have been such a fool? His first time over the line, and boy had he stepped in something this time. Moore’s precious shortcut to financial security was not a minor snub of his party; it was a complete betrayal of his country and his morals. His heart pounded hard, blood hammering in his ears and making him light-headed as a sweat broke out on his bald pate. This was exactly the kind of stress that his cardiologist had told him to avoid.

  As the lights came back up, Moore stood and politely excused himself, wobbling out the door as Craig began to ask a few pro-forma questions about the presentation. He headed down the hallway to the restroom where he splashed cold water on his face and tried to calm himself down. His thoughts were traveling at a frantic pace. Could he still vote for the bill and take the money knowing what he knew? Would Cardenas allow him to back out? What had Craig meant when he said that Cardenas wouldn’t be a problem by next week? Was he going to be killed? Craig certainly had the connections to get that done, if anyone did. Sheldon cupped two more handfuls of water to his face and tried to staunch the avalanche of thoughts. He needed a drink.

  As his breathing slowed and his head cleared, he had another troubling thought. Even if he voted for the bill, would he get the rest of the money if Cardenas was killed? Certainly not. He might commit political suicide and have nothing to show for it other than the two million he had already received. Could he even touch the two million for fear of being caught? Worse, if it ever came out that Moore had dealings with this drug lord, there would be a stampede of politicians on both sides of the aisle looking to make a splash by prosecuting him. His head started spinning again. He needed to have a few words with his chief of staff.

  Moore turned off the faucet, left the bathroom, and headed for the door, pulling his phone from the inside pocket of his suit coat and turning off the mute which he had activated for the meeting. He hit the speed dial for Ortiz and listened as the phone rang twice and then went to voicemail mid-ring. Apparently his assistant wasn’t taking his calls. That little spic fucker, this was all his fault. This was going to cost Moore millions of dollars, probably his job, and maybe his freedom. Whatever happened, it was def
initely time to cut ties with his chief of staff.

  There was nothing he could leave a detailed message about.

  “Call me as soon as you can,” he said tersely, then disconnected the call as he stumped down the stairs and back across the street toward his office. What a disaster.

  *

  The pickup truck bounced erratically as it crept down the steep, rugged road with Carlos pressing hard on the brakes to keep them from careening out of control. The surface of the road was made of sharp chunks of limestone, some of which were bigger than grapefruits, and the men feared they would pop a tire any second. With each violent lurch of the truck the three kayaks slid back and forth on the racks where they were precariously tied, threatening to spill over the hood and into the roadway. Chip rode in the passenger seat with Harris sitting behind. There was no conversation. They sat tensed, gripping the oh-shit handles and clenching their teeth together lest they bite their tongues as the truck heaved and rocked on the uneven surface. It had been like this for the last hour, and they were now deep in the middle of nowhere.

  Finally, they could see the glint of deep aquamarine water through the jungle ahead of them, and Carlos brought them to a halt. They all hopped out, and Chip led the way out of the woods and onto the exposed rocks below the river’s high-water mark. The jungle had been scoured away in floods during the rainy season exposing a white band of limestone that had been carved into smooth, sweeping sculptures by eons of flowing water. While the river was far below the flood level, it was still roaring strongly over a limestone ledge that created about a three-foot-tall waterfall. There was a strong recirculation at the base of the falls where the water in the pool poured back upstream to fill the void created by the falling water. Aside from being unable to stop in a torrent of whitewater or getting hung up in downed trees or under rocks, being stuck in such a recirculation was the greatest danger of river travel. Generally, the more water in the river, the stronger and more dangerous the recirculations. This one extended a few feet out from the base of the drop with a white froth of champagne bubbles rising from the depths behind it into the glowing blue-green pool.

  Chip carefully assessed what he saw. It was just as he had feared. Although the water didn’t look too high for kayaking right here, it would seem like more when it was compressed between the steep canyon walls upstream. Although the rapid where they stood looked to be within the limits of navigability, Chip thought that stopping above the large falls would still be a crapshoot.

  Harris noticed Chip’s scowl.

  “What do you think?” Harris asked, knowing already what the answer would be. It wasn’t a question of whether they would have to wait; it was a matter of how long.

  “It’s still a little bit too high,” Chip reluctantly answered.

  Although he was disappointed, Harris was also reassured to see the kid’s judgment. He knew that overconfidence could be a killer, and that making good decisions when it really counted was the best way to stay alive in dangerous situations. He thought again how he’d made the right choice by including the young river-runner on this mission. Aside from his calm head, the weeks of training had also shown Chip to be very fit for someone who didn’t regularly train, a natural at shooting, and a quick-study when it came to many other aspects of the operation. It was a shame he hadn’t joined the SEALs. Harris would have loved to have someone like Chip along on several past missions with DEVGRU.

  Chip was examining a sandy beach along the side of the pool at the base of the waterfall. “It looks like it’s come down in the last few days,” Chip said. “That last band of light rain came through on Thursday.”

  They had been carefully watching the radar map every day for the last two weeks to see what the weather was doing in the area.

  “You can see in the sand where the raindrops fell. It wasn’t enough to bring the river up any. And here’s the high water mark from the day it rained,” he indicated the area of smooth sand nearer to the water’s edge where the dimples from the raindrops weren’t visible.

  “So it’s dropped almost a foot since Thursday. At that rate, it shouldn’t be more than another week before it’s right, as long as we don’t get any more rain.”

  Harris raised his eyebrows in surprise. The kid was like some kind of native tracker on a whitewater hunt.

  “OK, Tonto,” he said with a chuckle. “So we should tell the boss that we’re looking at next Sunday or Monday to launch the mission?”

  “As long as it doesn’t rain much before then,” Chip reinforced again.

  “Right.”

  Chip began scrambling up the bank to a point above the rapid, and Harris followed. Carlos stayed where he was, cracking open a bottled water that he carried for a drink. When Chip was about twenty yards upstream of the rapid, he turned and looked downstream toward it. He could tell that the road they had driven down to the river was not visible from the streambed, and this was the spot where they were planning to exit the river at the end of the trip. Although they would have the benefit of GPS to know when they reached this point, he figured it wouldn’t be a bad idea to remember what it looked like from the direction they would be coming, just in case. He picked up a two-foot-long piece of driftwood about the thickness of his forearm and jammed it in a sandy beach a few feet above the recent high water mark. If there were lots of places that looked alike on the river, he would know this was the right one by seeing his marker. Once he saw it, the truck would be in the woods just downstream.

  Eager to be finished with the tedious drive back up the abysmally rocky road, they headed back to the truck. The rest of the team was waiting in the other truck in a concealed spot about an hour-and-a-half’s slow drive from here. They would travel the additional hour back to Ciudad Valles tonight and keep a low profile for a few days, maintaining their cover as traveling whitewater enthusiasts. Although he was eager to explore this new river, Chip was content with any chance to get back in his boat.

  *

  The sudden blaring of the marching tune startled Moore back to alertness. He slammed his glass of bourbon down and snatched the cell phone from his desk where he’d been watching it sit dormant for over two hours now.

  “Hello!” he shouted into the phone, the alcohol and his frustration getting the best of him.

  “Daddy?” Came the timid reply. God, he sounded horrible, she thought. Did he know what she’d been doing?

  Shit, Moore thought. It wasn’t that cocksucker Ortiz. He had completely forgotten that Sam was supposed to call today. There was an awkward pause while Moore got ahold of his emotions and took a deep breath.

  “Hey darlin’,” he finally mustered in his sticky-sweetest deep southern drawl. “How’s Daddy’s little girl doin’ way out in sunny California?”

  “I’m OK,” she replied with none of the bubbly conviction she’d had on her first year away at school.

  “How’d your midterms go?”

  “Fine,” Sam replied evasively, “I mean, I think I did OK.”

  “I’m sure you did great.”

  Moore was interrupted by the call waiting beep in his ear. He hated that thing but had no idea how to turn it off. He looked at the screen and saw Ortiz’ name on the caller ID.

  “Shit, uhhh, I’ve gotta take this call, darlin’. Let’s talk on Wednesday, OK?”

  “OK Daddy.” She wasn’t enjoying the line of questioning anyway. She hadn’t been to class in two weeks and was going to fail everything this quarter. It was only a matter of time before he found out.

  “I love you, Daddy.”

  “I love you too, sweetheart.”

  Moore held the phone in front of his blurry eyes so he could see the keys and mashed the green button with a thick thumb.

  “Hello.” Moore’s answer was far more reserved and ominous this time.

  “Hey boss,” Ortiz said cautiously, “you wanted me to call?”

  “I know,” Moore said slowly and seriously, emphasizing each word to convey the deeper meaning.


  There was a long moment of silence while Ortiz processed the information. Moore’s grip was so tight that it threatened to crush the tiny phone in his massive paw.

  “So?” Ortiz finally said indignantly. “It doesn’t change anything.” His heightened emotion made his accent thicker.

  “It changes everything, goddammit!” Moore roared. “You’ve got me tangled up with Mexican enemy number one, and you say it doesn’t change anything?”

  Ortiz was sick of listening to this idiot, and pissed off that he was being shouted at after all that he had done for the man. He finally snapped.

  “That’s right,” he said firmly with fiery Latin bravado, “it doesn’t change anything. You vote for the fucking bill and you get your fucking money. Do you have any idea what will happen if you cross these people? Do you have any idea who you’re dealing with?! You think these people care that you’re a big senator? If you go back on the agreement, you’ll be lucky if all they do is expose the deal. You’ll be begging to end up in jail instead of having your family mailed to you in pieces. Get it? Nothing is changed except that you understand the game you’re playing. Don’t fuck it up.”

  The line went dead.

  Sheldon hurled the cell phone across the room where it shattered on the wall. He snatched up the glass off his desk, turned to the credenza, and filled it to the brim. His hand shook as he lifted it to his lips and gulped, relishing the fire as it burned its way down his gullet and into the churning sea of acid in his belly.

  11

  Tuesday, November 15th