The drive took hours and the men began to loosen up once they were deep into the desert. One of the third-row guys pulled some water bottles out of a cooler in the back and handed them out. The men put their guns at their sides and started talking. None addressed Ned directly, but he figured out what they were all doing.
The cube vans were full of drugs, mostly coke, some meth, and some weed. The rest of the vehicles were full of gunmen for protection. The plan was simple. There was a point on the highway that was just a hundred or so feet from the U.S. border. On the other side of the border was Coronado National Forest. Their convoy would meet up with a bus full of men and women whose job would be to cross the border with backpacks full of drugs. At the same time as the cube vans disgorged the drugs, they would be filled up with cash and perhaps weapons from their contacts in Arizona. If they were intercepted by the Americans—the DEA or border patrol—or by the Mexican military, the plan was to run. But if it was the Federales, the state police, or another cartel, they were instructed to shoot their way to freedom.
Ned could tell they had arrived when he saw about two dozen poor-looking people milling about outside a dilapidated old bus. The border was indeed close and consisted of an ancient wire fence. There were three visible breaches in the quarter mile or so around the bus. The convoy surrounded the bus and the more senior members from the ranch-house crew instructed the bus passengers to unload the cube vans and put the drugs in their backpacks. They would then cross over the border in groups of three or four. At about the same time, other operatives would return with backpacks full of U.S. currency or weapons, which they would dutifully load into the now-empty cube vans. Once finished, they would be directed to get on the bus so that the cycle could be repeated.
Sitting on the ground with his back up against the Suburban, Ned marveled at how efficient the process was, when he heard the sound of engines. He wasn't sure if it was more of his crew, the cops, or another gang. Instinctively, he looked over at Martillo, the authority figure, who was smoking a joint about six feet away from him. Noticing that Ned was looking, Martillo took a huge drag and grinned at Ned as he held the smoke in his lungs. Ned was waiting for him to exhale when a hole opened up in Martillo's head. Later, in his dreams, Ned would remember seeing light through the hole. Blood and brain tissue flew from Martillo's head onto Ned's shirt.
Ned leaped to his feet. He could hear the shots now. Along with the budda-budda of AK-47s and the zing-zing-zing of the AR-15s, he could sense, but not quite hear, the report of a hard-core sniper rifle, maybe even a Barrett.
He ran. People—shooters, drivers, and drug mules—were running and falling all around him. He could see vehicles shot full of holes, but he could not see who was doing the shooting. He ran, not knowing what to do. The driver's door of one of the cube vans was open. He leaped inside. Realizing that he was in a huge target, he felt for the key in the ignition. It was there. He turned it and the old Chevy V8 eagerly came to life. Against every instinct he had, Ned sat up straight and stepped on the gas. He turned the van toward the highway and had to stomp on the brake pedal to avoid killing two men, one of whom was badly injured and being dragged by the other out of the line of fire. Ned stared at them, then came to his senses and opened the passenger door. The snap-snap of the guns became boom-booms. The healthier man dragged the hurt man into the cab then leaped in. He didn't say anything, just slammed the door. Ned stood on the gas pedal. The cube van lurched onto the highway, the back wheels caught the pavement, and the big truck sped down the road like it was flung from a slingshot.
Ned never looked back. The two men in the cab with him were panicking. Blood was dripping from the neck of the injured man into the foot well of the cube van. The other man, confused and overwhelmed, was praying and crying. He pulled off his necklace with a pendant of what looked to Ned like the Grim Reaper, and pushed it onto the other guy's chest chanting something Ned didn't understand.
Twenty miles from the attack, Ned regained his wits. He knew that no amount of praying to whomever this guy was praying was going to help the bleeding man. He pulled the cube van over to the side of the road, leaped out of the driver's side door and ran around the front of the van. He opened the passenger door, used his left arm to push the uninjured man aside, and took a close look at the other. He had a huge gash on his neck, but it hadn't affected his windpipe, his jugular, or his carotid. It was a flesh wound. Ned took off his shirt and pressed it against the wound then instructed the other guy to keep up the pressure, and went back to the driver's seat.
He drove. He just drove not knowing where to go. But the Cuerta highway only goes one place. He blasted through a police checkpoint at seventy-five miles per hour. He heard a few gunshots, but nobody chased him. He made it to Nogales. That's when it occurred to him. He had no place to go. No place other than the ranch house.
They were among the first ones back. There were a couple of SUVs and one pickup truck already there. All the vehicles had holes in them and either smoke or steam was coming from under the hood of the pickup. As soon as he got out of the cube van, Ned ran to the group of men gathered in front of the veranda. “This man needs to go to a hospital!” he shouted. Without a word, one of the men ran to the cube van and helped move the injured man to one of the SUVs, then took off toward the city.
Nobody else spoke. There was some muttering about who'd been hit and who hadn't. But nobody wanted to talk with Ned. In fact, they studiously avoided even eye contact with him. As the hours passed, more and more vehicles came back, often with badly injured men. Still nobody talked to Ned. Finally, he saw El Chango II emerge from one of the SUVs. Ned rushed over to greet him, but slowed down when he saw all the others stare.
“Good to see you made it,” he said.
“Yeah, you too, man,” the Mayan replied. “But I wouldn't want to be in your shoes. Some of the guys think this was your fault. I heard them talking. Some say you are DEA, others say you are in with the Sinaloans or Los Zetas. Some just say you are bad luck to have around. I would lay low if I were you. Don't do anything to draw attention to yourself.”
Before Ned could answer, El Ratón burst from the ranch house with two men brandishing AK-47s. He stopped at the edge of the veranda and shouted as loud as he could: “Attention El Espagueti! The boss will see you. Stay with these men until a ride can be arranged.”
A murmur rose from the crowd. Somebody cheered.
Chapter Seven
Agent Bob Fernandez of the CIA laughed into the phone. Tovar had been inquiring with the agency's office in Moldova about Aiken's former girlfriend, Daniela Eminescu, who had been deported back to the country. O'Malley had been assigned the task, but when she received no answer after repeated attempts, Tovar, who had friends in the CIA, tried his hand. He was actually surprised that they had not gotten back to him. “You were actually serious about that?” Fernandez asked incredulously. “I mean, sure, we can try, but to find something like that would be almost impossible.”
Tovar was surprised. CIA agents didn't normally act that way. Usually it was all rah-rah, by-the-book optimism from them. This guy was acting like he worked in the DMV or some other government office. “What's the problem?” he asked.
“Moldova is the poorest, worst-run, most corrupt country in all of Europe,” Fernandez answered. “Humans are its main export. The cops there are paid less than janitors, government officials are all mobbed up. The most we can do here is keep an eye on who's paying whom. I'm just grateful that there's no serious Islamic fundamentalist movement here.”
The FBI agent pressed. “That's not what I heard,” he said. “Isn't Moldova how you guys get sophisticated Russian weaponry for ‘research purposes’? Don't I remember something about a shipment of MiG-29s that ended up in D.C.?”
The CIA man laughed again. “I don't know where you get your information,” he said. “But that's hardly an FBI issue.”
“But the Aiken investigation is,” Tovar said. “And a major lead brings it to Moldova.�
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“I am aware of that, but we are totally swamped here and get literally no help from the locals,” Fernandez said. “I wish we could do more.”
“I know you are aware of the gravity of this murder investigation; in fact, the murder of a fellow agent,” Tovar said. “I do hope you will put appropriate resources on the case.”
Fernandez sighed. “I've been looking at the file while we've been talking and I think there's another problem,” he said. “The name she gave you and Immigration was Eminescu, right?”
“Yeah, why's that a problem?”
“Well, Mihail Eminescu is kind of a national hero around here; a poet, he's kind of a big deal,” Fernandez said. “Everything is named after him here, streets, museums, libraries, parks, restaurants, you name it.”
“So it's a common name; is that it?”
“No, quite the opposite, nobody has it anymore,” Fernandez answered. “That she told you her name was Eminescu is kind of like if she told you her name was Shakespeare or Voltaire or something like that. It's obviously a fake. And since she was arrested and deported without any official papers, all you have for her identity is her word.”
“But we have a description, dozens of photos . . .”
“This isn't New York City,” Fernandez said. “This is old-school Eastern Europe—everyone here is from the same ethnic group. Hell, I think three-quarters of them are cousins at the very least. Your pictures, your description—they should narrow it down to about a quarter-million people or so. That is, if she's still in the country. The borders here are imaginary in some places. And nobody is ever still here if they can find a way to get out. This woman you're talking about seems smart—or at least cunning—enough to have left Dodge by now.”
“I'm beginning to see your point, but if something turns up . . .”
Fernandez chuckled. “Hey, something is always turning up in this inbred pigsty,” he said sympathetically. “Did I tell you that the country was actually named after some guy's dog?”
* * *
Ned was trembling. He knew these guys were serious. In between two tough-looking guys with AK-47s and in front of two more guys with handguns in the third row of the giant SUV, all he could think about was the guy he saw get blinded in Russia because he was caught stealing from the mafia. He knew the Mexican cartels had a habit of torturing prisoners for answers or sometimes just for show, to threaten the competition. The guys at the ranch house used to watch them do it on YouTube and other video-sharing sites until the videos were eventually taken down. The men would laugh and laugh as some poor guy would be beaten, burned, and cut. He'd seen men and boys have their fingers, ears, lips, and other parts sliced off, literally disassembled on camera. The images from those videos ran over and over in his head as the Suburban made its way into Del Rosario, one of Nogales's better but not great neighborhoods.
The SUV pulled up, not in front of the massive estate or mansion that Ned had expected after seeing how Russian crime bosses live, but into the driveway of a comfortable but unprepossessing townhouse that would not have been out of place in Tucson or El Paso. The men made no effort to hide their guns when they escorted Ned in.
Inside, the house was typical of the ostentatious decor Ned knew drug bosses appreciated. There were gold weapons, statues of various dangerous animals, and original oil paintings of heroic- or at least masculine-looking figures. But dominating all of it was a gold and jeweled figurine of the Grim Reaper portrayed as an angel. It was an image Ned had seen before—a humbler version of it had hung around the neck of the injured foot soldier he'd rescued in the ambush—and he had noticed that many of the Mexicans seemed to revere it.
Ned was pushed down to a couch and told to wait. After an agonizing four or five minutes, a man walked in. Ned was shocked. It was the long-haired man he had spoken with about his AK-47 on the ranch-house veranda. Against his will, Ned began to shake again. The man looked at him, grinned, spread his arms in a mock shrug and said: “Surprised?” Then he sent the guards out of the room.
Once they had left, the boss smiled again and said: “Don't worry, man, you're not in trouble. You're here to be praised.” He lit a cigar, and offered Ned one.
Ned begged off. “Honestly, I didn't think I had done anything wrong.” It was all he could think to say, even though he knew he had run from the gunfight rather than shoot.
“Wrong? Of course there were some losses, but what could have happened would have been far worse. Trust me, I have seen this happen many, many times before,” the boss smirked dramatically. “But what you did, you think I want to punish you? Are you kidding? You bravely drove a cube van full of my cash—maybe $6 million, maybe even more—back to regional headquarters and saved another man's life. A man you didn't even know. A man who—I am ashamed to say—suspected and perhaps even hated you. If anything, you should be rewarded.”
Ned was beginning to regroup. “Okay, then why did everyone at the ranch house want to kill me?”
“They are—as a group—very suspicious,” the boss said, “and I will also admit that many of them are not very well educated. They don't have the tolerance and confidence that worldliness has given men such as you and me. When something bad happens, they immediately look for someone to blame. Someone, anyone, other than themselves. You look different than them, so it had to be you. The changos are also different, but our men don't respect them enough to fear or even blame them.” He sat in a chair behind a desk facing the couch. “Besides, you are American. These guys, the whole world, they blame everything on you—the weather even.”
“But you're not like them. Are you even from Mexico?”
The boss smiled and rubbed his face in frustration. “Ah, but you make the same mistake they do. Just as the Mexicans think all Americans just want to take advantage of them, you, an American, think all Mexicans are uneducated and uncultured. These beliefs, what you call stereotypes, may bring comfort and a feeling of superiority among the uneducated, but they can also be dangerous.” He stood. “Don't think these Sonoran hicks and wannabes represent my entire country. In fact, Mexico has an old and proud culture with countless achievements. I have two master's degrees myself—would have gotten a doctorate, but couldn't stand the politics at the universities. And I am worth several billion of your American dollars.”
“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend.”
“It's quite alright,” the man smiled again. “I understand that your time in Mexico has not exposed you to our more impressive people and places.” The man approached Ned. “Allow me to change that by introducing myself,” he said, extending his hand. “I am Jesús Bravo Meléndez.”
“Better known as Poco Loco?”
Bravo sighed and sat on his desk. “Yes, sadly. But it is a necessary part of doing business. Like any business, it's all about branding. People need to know who you are; you need an image that sticks with them.”
“And you picked a dead clown?”
“A dead, but universally beloved clown,” Poco Loco smiled. “It is a sad fact of life in this region that the only way to build respect is through fear.”
“And people are afraid of the clown?”
“No, not in and of himself. Not at all. But it's a tried-and-true psychological trick. It was one of your more astute Hollywood directors—I think it may have been John Carpenter—who said something very inspirational to me,” Poco Loco explained. “From the familiar comes real fear—to see a strange man threaten you with a blood-stained knife is scary, but to see your mother threaten you with a blood-stained knife—well, that is truly terrifying. Everybody grew up with the clown, they loved the clown, they felt for him when his daughter was killed, they wept when he killed himself.”
“I see your point,” Ned said, chilled to the bone. “So what do you need me for?”
“I don't need anyone,” he said sharply, then sighed. “Allow me to explain. You know what we do here? Obviously, it's more than just dropping off tiny bags of weed to a bunch of peasants.”
“Years ago, after we stopped letting the Colombians push us around,” Poco Loco continued, “some people here in Mexico started making ridiculous amounts of money; I must admit—with all modesty—that I am one of them. All the bosses had a working agreement, but then things changed. Calderón and his arrogant government—blind to how truly powerful we had become—attempted to put us down, and then that stupid asshole from Sinaloa, El Chapo (how I curse his name), started to take more than his fair share, breaking the detente. Since then, everyone has been fighting everyone. Nobody wants to give up, so its gets more violent, more corrupt, more insidious.”
“It like the whole country is in a gang war.”
Poco Loco smiled. “I like to think of it more as a civil war.”
“Really? You want to have the country run by drug dealers?”
Poco Loco did not look offended at Ned's accusation. “All the great countries came from rebellions led by so-called criminals. Look at your own, a bunch of rich men who refused to pay their taxes. Look at Israel, or South Africa. Mandela spent twenty-seven years in jail for a fire bombing, now he is an international symbol of peace.”
“I know your men well,” Ned said. “None of them are thinking like Mandela.”
“They don't have to, and neither did Mandela's men, I might add. You don't understand, we have lived for countless generations under a corrupt and brutal regime and it needs to be replaced. If we must sell some coke to your people to finance that, so be it. You can afford it.”
“And hang people from overpasses and drive gold-plated Mercedes SUVs . . .”
Poco Loco smiled. “But you don't know what it's like to have power; I mean, real power,” he said. “All of my life, I've seen these guys, I know them well. They realize they can do whatever they want, whatever they ever wanted and they become confused. Some of them, they go crazy for sex. They do everything to anything that walks, but it always ends up in deeper frustration as their imaginations are very limited. They are looking for the young love they feel they missed out on, but they never, ever find it. In fact, what they are chasing just gets farther and farther away no matter how hard they try. It makes them crazy with frustration. Usually they turn to violence (although some start there); they get a love for killing. It becomes a love of theirs to watch people die. But unless you are a particular type of psychopath, killing becomes boring, it's so . . . so . . . how do I say this? Anti-climactic. You get used to it. To understand all of this, many turn to their own drugs and that never ends well. These men, they are no better than the thieves and liars who govern us. And, like them, they will fall victim to their own excesses and moral depravity.”
Jerry Langton Three-Book Biker Bundle Page 50