by M. A. Lawson
“Don’t you have to have his lawyer here?” Lincoln asked.
“Screw his lawyer,” Kay said. “And this whole thing is probably a waste of time, as I imagine Tito isn’t going to tell us shit, but our boss told us to talk to him, so we’re here.”
Lincoln started to say something else, but then he closed his eyes for a moment and rocked back slightly on his heels, as if he suddenly was having a hard time maintaining his balance. When he opened his eyes, he said, “Whoa.”
“You okay, Marshal?” Kay asked. Before he could answer, she said, “Oh. Do you guys have the key to Tito’s cell, or do I have to call the MPs up front?”
“We have one,” Rivers said. “It’s, it’s . . . shit, it’s right there.” He pointed to an electronic keycard with a lanyard hanging on a wire hook near the cell door, but the way he spoke, he was clearly having a hard time completing a simple sentence.
Kay already knew the marshals had a key to Tito’s cell. Mora had told her. She just wanted to know where it was so she wouldn’t have to hunt for it.
Rivers had been standing when he spoke to Kay, but now he sat down slowly on the cot where he’d been lying when Kay and Kirk arrived. “Jesus,” he said. “Something’s wrong.”
He fell over onto his side and collapsed on the cot.
Lincoln looked down at his partner, but his eyes seemed unable to focus. “What the fu—”
Then he started to fall, and Kay caught him so he wouldn’t hit the floor too hard.
Kay wondered if she’d just killed the two men. Mora had told her the chemical on her right palm was absorbed through the skin and would incapacitate the marshals for at least two hours. It wouldn’t kill them, Mora said, unless they had some sort of allergic reaction to the drug. She hoped to God he hadn’t lied to her. She checked both marshals’ pulses; they felt strong.
Kay was also relieved to see that the drug wasn’t affecting her. The first substance she’d sprayed on her right hand had been a thin, rubberlike coating that would keep the drug from being absorbed through her skin. Mora had said that fifteen minutes after the knockout chemical was exposed to air, it became ineffective and could be washed off with water. There was no sink in the room, but there was a toilet. Kay plunged her right hand into the toilet bowl, swirled it around, and then wiped her hand on Lincoln’s shirt. She plunged her hand into the bowl a second time and wiped it dry. All she could do now was hope that the chemical was gone; she could just see herself scratching her nose and passing out.
She took the keycard off the hook and unlocked the door to Tito’s cell. She knew that when the door opened the marines at the control point would see a light turn from green to red, indicating the cell door had been unlocked. That wouldn’t be a problem, however, since the marines knew that Kay and Kirk had come to talk to Tito and because the marshals were guarding him.
Tito’s cell had a solid steel door, not bars, and Tito was on his feet, apparently waiting for her, when she opened the door. Mora had said that Tito knew she was coming tonight, and Kay figured that Tito’s lawyer was the one who had passed the word to him.
“Hola, bitch,” Tito said, smiling broadly.
“Let’s go,” Kay said.
Back in the marshals’ cell, Kirk had stripped off his blond wig and mustache, popped the blue contact lenses out of his eyes, and dropped the contacts into the toilet. He then handed Tito a contact lens case and a small vial of saline solution, and said, “Put the contacts in,” then began stripping off his clothes.
Tito, being careful not to drop the contact lenses, put them in his eyes. While he was doing this, Kirk stripped down to his underwear. Tito also stripped and put on Kirk’s clothes, which fit him perfectly. Kay couldn’t believe how much Kirk looked like Tito. He looked exactly like him; an identical twin wouldn’t have been a better match.
“Please sit on the cot,” Kirk said to Tito, and then he put the blond wig on Tito’s head, adjusting it slightly until he was satisfied. Taking a small tube, he applied some sort of glue to Tito’s upper lip and attached the mustache. Tito put on Kirk’s glasses and said to Kay, “How do I look?”
“You look like an asshole,” Kay said, and Tito laughed.
Kirk was now dressed in Tito’s clothes. He took a breath, like a man about to plunge into a deep pool, and walked over to Tito’s cell and stepped inside. As Kay closed the cell door, she could see the fear in his eyes and knew he was thinking about the years he would spend in prison for helping Tito escape.
In two hours, the marshals would wake up. They’d know they’d been drugged in some manner, and the first thing they would do was check to see if Tito was still in his cell, and they would probably think that Kirk was Tito—at least initially, and for a few precious moments afterward. But in less than two hours—before the marshals regained consciousness—Kay would be across the border with Tito.
Soon, however—how soon was anyone’s guess—somebody would figure out that it didn’t make sense for Kay Hamilton to render two federal marshals unconscious unless it was to free Tito Olivera, and they’d take a harder look at Kirk. Maybe Tito had an identifying scar or birthmark and they’d be able to tell that Kirk was an imposter. Or maybe they’d jump right to a fingerprint check. All Kay knew for sure was that the marshals would be groggy for a bit, confused, do a quick check to see if Tito was still in his cell, then start making a bunch of phone calls.
There was another possibility, according to Mora. He knew from reports passed on by Tito’s lawyer that the marines, particularly on the night shift when things were quiet throughout the brig, liked to bullshit with the marshals. So a marine might go down to the marshals’ cell in less than two hours and find them unconscious. They’d check Tito’s cell, see Tito—or a guy they thought was Tito—sitting there, then call for the medics. The end result was the same: By the time they talked to the marshals and figured out that Kirk wasn’t Tito, Kay would be over the border.
“You know what to do?” Kay asked Tito.
“Yeah, I just follow your sweet ass out of here and keep my mouth shut. Then we get in your car and go to the beaner machine.”
“The what?” Kay said.
Tito laughed. He was in a great mood, and either too arrogant or too stupid to know he should be nervous. “The beaner machine. What we use to move us beaners across the border. Anyway, we get to the transport vehicle, I hop in the compartment, and off we go to ol’ Mexico.” He pronounced it May-hay-ko.
Their exit from Pendleton went smoothly. She called the marines at the control point from the marshals’ cell, and when she and Tito arrived at the holding cage, Kay smiled up at the camera and gave a little wave. The door locks clicked open, and Kay and Tito passed into the control point area. Kay said, “Thanks, guys,” to the marines, and out the door they went. At the vehicle checkpoint closest to the brig, a marine shined his flashlight into the car, directly onto Tito’s face—blond-haired, blue-eyed Tito—and they held up their IDs and were on their way.
As they passed through the Pendleton San Luis Rey Gate, Tito said, “I hope I get to spend a little time with you, chica, before this is all over. I owe you.” Then he laughed and said, “Hey, I’m kidding. The trouble you’re gonna be in with your own government, I don’t need to do a thing to you.”
Kay knew Tito was lying—he’d do something to make her suffer if he got the chance—but she figured Mora had told him to be nice to her, to maintain the illusion that she’d be set free after she handed Tito over.
“Give me your cell phone,” Tito said, and Kay handed him her phone. Great. Now there would be a record of her calling someone in Olivera’s outfit down in Mexico, making it look as if Kay had connections with the cartel down there.
Tito punched a number into Kay’s phone and said, “Raphael, I’m on my way. We just left Pendleton. The bitch done good. I owe you big-time.”
As Kay was driving toward North River Roa
d, she couldn’t help but think that Tito was right about the trouble she was in with the U.S. government. If she somehow, miraculously, got out of this whole thing alive, not only was her career over but she would probably end up in jail. It was almost funny. Three days earlier, she’d been so worried about playing office politics to get a promotion; now that was the least of her concerns.
As the old saying goes: Man plans, God laughs.
Five minutes later, God laughed again.
32
When Tito called Mora to tell him the first part of the escape had gone smoothly, Mora was in the house in Tijuana where Jessica was being held captive. After speaking to Tito, Mora smoked a cigarette while sipping a cup of espresso—it was going to be a long night—then made a call.
“Take care of the woman,” he said. “Don’t waste any time on the brother or the mother. Just kill them.” He looked at his watch. It was almost one a.m. both in Tijuana and Neah Bay, Washington. “I want her found tomorrow. I want them to be able to identify her by her fingerprints, not by her face.”
“Yes, sir,” the man said. He, too, was ex-military, although he hadn’t been an officer like Raphael Mora. He was also the most sadistic human being that Mora had ever known: Nothing gave him greater pleasure than inflicting pain, and if he hadn’t worked for the Olivera cartel, he most likely would have been a serial killer. Well, technically, considering the number of people he’d slain, he probably was a serial killer—but he killed for Mora and not for himself
—
Mike Figgins died well.
He and Patterson had never taken turns staying awake all night, guarding the Delgatos. They both agreed there was no point in doing that, because they knew if Caesar Olivera found out where María was hiding, he’d send in a team to kill them, more men than he and Patterson could possibly fight off.
They had installed motion detectors outside the house when they first moved in with Miguel, but the damn animals—coons, possum, and deer—were constantly setting them off, so they disabled them. The only thing they did was lock the front and back doors with dead bolts that required a key to open them, and they only did that to keep María in the house.
Olivera’s men came in through the front and back doors simultaneously, using SWAT-style battering rams. The first person they killed was Patterson. Patterson had a hard time sleeping and was standing in front of the refrigerator, wearing boxer shorts, a bottle of Maalox in one hand, when the back door exploded. A man cut him down with rounds fired from a silenced M4 before he could take a step.
When the doors were smashed open, everyone in the house woke up. Figgins immediately realized what was happening, jumped out of bed, and reached for the Colt lying on the night table next to his bed. He glanced toward the bed where Patterson slept and saw it was empty. He figured that Patterson had been unable to sleep and was stuffing his face with a midnight snack when the assault team came through the doors. He figured his best friend was already dead.
As he stuck his head out the bedroom door, he heard the spitting sound of silenced M4 rounds coming from the other end of the house, where Miguel slept; he could also hear María screaming. María was behind him, in the last bedroom down the hall where she slept with her mother. Two guys dressed in jeans and black sweatshirts, no masks, both holding assault rifles, were coming down the hall. Figgins shot one of them immediately. He wasn’t a particularly good shot and he didn’t know the men were wearing bulletproof vests, but he got lucky and hit one of the attackers in the face, killing him instantly. Before he could get off a second shot, he was hit by four bullets—in the left arm, the left side, two in his left thigh. The shots didn’t come from the attackers coming down the hall; they came from outside the house. They were fired through the window into the bedroom where he’d been sleeping. It was apparent that these guys had scoped out the house and knew where everyone slept.
Figgins collapsed to the floor, and he knew he was dying. His gun was a couple inches away from his outstretched hand, so he decided to play dead. He figured it would only be about a minute before one of the shooters came down the hallway and put a bullet into his head.
But they didn’t. The two shooters stepped over him and burst into María’s bedroom. He heard more shots being fired and figured that they had killed both María and her mother, but a moment later María was dragged out of the bedroom wearing a T-shirt and panties. The men pulled her down the hall toward the living room.
As near as Figgins could tell, there were six of them in the house, including the dead man lying in the hallway. They were speaking Spanish, so he didn’t know what they were saying, but he could hear them whooping and laughing—and María screaming. There was the sound of a slap, and María stopped screaming.
He could see one guy in the doorway where the hallway entered the living room; the guy’s back was to him. He was holding a rifle in his hand, the barrel pointing down at the floor. Figgins grabbed his gun and started crawling, dragging himself down the hallway, since he couldn’t walk. When he was ten feet from the living room, he could see María through the legs of the guy standing with his back to him. María was on the floor, naked. Two men were holding her arms, and a third man was pulling down his pants.
Mike Figgins figured he had one shot. He could shoot the guy standing in the doorway, he could shoot one of the guys holding María, or he could shoot the guy about to rape her.
He also knew what was going to happen to María. She was going to be gang-raped until the men tired of that—or ran out of time—then she was going to be mutilated and tortured before they killed her.
He aimed the gun. Just before he pulled the trigger he thought, Should never have gone to that fuckin’ casino.
Then Figgins made the best shot of his life. He got María Delgato in the head.
Five seconds later, DEA Agent Michael Figgins was dead, too.
33
Kay knew that within a couple of hours, every law-enforcement agency in California was going to be looking for her car. In fifteen minutes, however, she’d be out of her car and in the “beaner” minivan waiting on North River Road, then she’d head south and take Tito across the border. That is, she’d be in the minivan if she followed Mora’s plan—and she had no intention of following Mora’s plan.
Mora had needed Kay to get Tito out of Camp Pendleton, but once Tito was out, Mora wouldn’t need her. So although Mora may have been telling the truth about letting her take Tito across the border to exchange him for Jessica, Kay thought it more likely he was lying. What he’d probably do was have the minivan driver—the guy with the cowboy hat—try to kill her, and then who knows what might happen to Jessica: a whorehouse or a grave? It also occurred to Kay that the real reason Mora wanted her to meet the minivan on North River Road was that it was so dark and isolated, and thus a better spot for the driver to ambush her.
So Kay had a little surprise for Mora and Tito. The object she’d placed in the pocket in the driver’s-side door was a Taser. At the right moment, she’d reach down, pull up the Taser, and shoot across her lap. Then she’d zap the son of a bitch until he was unconscious and dump him in the trunk.
After that, she’d swap her license plates with plates from some parked car. And then she would call Mora. She’d tell him that if he wanted Tito back, they’d make the exchange in the U.S. and Kay would pick the spot. If Mora threatened to hurt Jessica, she’d threaten to hurt Tito. If Mora threatened to kill Jessica, she’d threaten to kill Tito. She was going to force Mora to bring her daughter across the border and make the exchange in some place and in some manner where she and Jessica might both survive.
Tito, sitting next to her, still wearing the blond wig and the blond mustache, interrupted her thoughts. “Drive faster,” he said.
“No,” she said. “The van is only a few miles away, and it’s going to be at least two hours before they know you’ve escaped. We don’t need to get stopped by a cop for speeding
.”
“Huh,” Tito said, which Kay took for his agreement.
“Where’s your gun?” he asked next.
She wished he’d just shut up so she could think.
“It’s in the trunk. I couldn’t take it into the brig, so I left it there.” Actually, her gun was on the floor of the car, beneath the front seat.
It was time to put Tito in the trunk. She reached down with her left hand for the Taser . . .
And that’s when God laughed.
Coming toward Kay’s car was another car, and for some reason the idiot driving had his brights on and they were blinding her. Then the other car swerved into her lane and was coming directly at her.
Kay reacted without thinking and did the only thing she could do: She cranked the steering wheel hard to the right to avoid a head-on collision—and sent her car into a drainage ditch. Kay and Tito both screamed as the car flipped over onto its roof.
Kay didn’t move immediately, but it didn’t feel like anything was broken and she didn’t seem to be bleeding. She did a physical inventory, moving fingers, arms, legs, and neck. Everything seemed functional. The seat belt and air bag had apparently worked as advertised. She looked over at Tito; like her, he was upside down—but he wasn’t moving and his head was at an odd angle. Oh, shit. Then it registered in her mind that there was no air bag deployed around him, and no seat belt holding him in place. Kay’s 2004 Camry sounded an alarm when you started the car to tell you the seat belts were unfastened, but it stopped after about ten seconds, figuring it had given you enough warning. And with her mind focused only on escaping from Pendleton, she hadn’t even noticed he wasn’t wearing his seat belt. She had no idea why the air bag didn’t deploy, but considering the age of the car, maybe that wasn’t a mystery, either.