Papal Justice

by CG Cooper

  The stoic leader somehow kept it together until Cal finished.

  “So that’s it. We need to get up to Mexicali as soon as we can. They’re pretty sure the attackers slipped back through the border from Calexico. Now, the problem is transportation. Trav says they’ve shut down the airports in both cities, so flying straight in is a no-go. If we take the vans, I’m afraid to ask how long it would take.”

  Cal’s eyes rested on Ruiz for the answer. The cartel leader had regained a measure of his composure and answered in a strained voice, “Four hours barring any traffic.”

  “That’s too long. Any other ideas?” Cal asked the rest of the men. Maybe Brother Hendrik had a miracle up his robe sleeve.

  No one answered. Instead, Daniel asked, “What about El Moreno?”

  Cal had almost forgotten about the Guerrero Cartel and their terrorist companions.

  “I think our priority is the Pope. Anyone disagree?” Cal asked.

  Even the monks agreed.

  “If we’re lucky, they’re part of the kidnapping,” Cal continued. “I find it hard to believe this is a coincidence. Ruiz, do you think your competition could pull this off?”

  Ruiz’s eyes snapped up, like Cal was accusing him.

  “Whatever my competition is, many of them are still men of faith. No, I don’t think they would do this, but El Moreno would. Few people know this, but he hates the Catholic Church. I don’t know why, but I’m sure it has something to do with him being an orphan.”

  Cal nodded. “That’s good to know. At least now we have suspect number one identified. Any ideas on how we can get north?”

  Ruiz spoke up again. “I have an idea, but you won’t like it.” He had a look on his face like he’d just remembered something he’d left hidden away.

  “What is it?”

  “The Mexicali Cartel owes me a couple of favors.”

  “But I thought they were the enemy,” Gaucho said.

  Ruiz shrugged. “Like any business, competition is fierce, but sometimes we work together on things. The Mexicali Cartel makes a lot of money ferrying other cartels’ drugs across the border just like we help with import in Acapulco. Besides, Barachon won’t like the fact that the Pope was kidnapped.”

  “Who’s that?” Cal asked.

  “The leader of the Mexicali Cartel. His brother is a priest, and Barachon has funded a handful of churches around his city. If there’s anyone who would like revenge, it’s him.”

  “Okay, but I’m not sure we should tell him about the Pope,” Cal said, worried that the word could spread and make any rescue attempt impossible.

  “The way I see it, our options are pretty limited, Cal,” MSgt Trent interjected. “I say we listen to Ruiz and take our chances.”

  It was a crapshoot any way you looked at it. Cal gave the Pope a twenty-percent chance of survival. If the jihadis got their hands on him, no doubt an internet video was about to hit the waves. Had that been their play all along, to lure the well-meaning Pope to Mexico and snatch him to be the world’s best piece of propaganda? It was bold as hell, but someone had already pulled off the hardest part. Time was ticking.

  “Fine. Make the call,” Cal said. “The faster we get there, the better our chances.”

  Ruiz nodded and moved off to call his fellow cartel jefe.

  +++

  The conversation went smoother than Ruiz expected. Other than the shock on the other end, Barachon took it well. As Ruiz knew he would, the Mexicali padron wanted blood.

  “You let me cut them into pieces, Armando. Animales. You let me do that, and I will give you anything you need,” he’d said.

  Barachon gave Ruiz the secret coordinates for one of his cartel’s hidden landing strips. Each faction had them and this one happened to be very close to Mexicali. They’d said their goodbyes and Ruiz hung up the call.

  He looked up at the sky, stars twinkling down in the pre-dawn air. He said a prayer, then another. Maybe it was time. Could this be the sign he’d been waiting for? He’d first thought that divine intervention was in play when his nephew called. They’d been close, more like father and son than uncle and nephew. Ruiz was the strong male influence Gaucho needed as a child. In turn, his nephew had loved him unconditionally. On his long deployments with the Army, the fatherless soldier had always carried a photograph of a smiling Gaucho wearing a cowboy hat and the gunslinger’s belt he’d given the boy.

  Ruiz yearned for those days. He’d secretly watched his nephew and his American friends. They were good men. Ruiz said a final prayer and went in search of his nephew. They would have a few minutes before the airplanes were refueled.

  +++

  “Gaucho, can I talk to you and Cal?” Ruiz asked. Gaucho looked up from where he was stowing his gear in the luggage compartment of the food transport plane. It bore the faded lettering Acapulco Produce, and was apparently one of his uncle’s many business ventures.

  “Sure.”

  They went to find Cal. He was talking with Brother Hendrik, who had just talked to his superiors in Rome. The monk was as heated as Gaucho had seen him. He looked like he would likely rip off the head of whoever had taken the Pope.

  “We’ll do everything we can, I promise,” Cal was saying. Brother Hendrik nodded curtly and left.

  “Cal, my uncle says he wants to talk to us,” Gaucho said.

  “Did he get in touch with Bajon?” Cal asked, skewering the proper pronunciation.

  “It’s Barachon,” Ruiz corrected, “and yes. He has a secret strip outside of Mexicali. He’ll be waiting with vehicles to get us inside the city.”

  “And the police? Do you think they’ll be a problem?”

  “He tells me they won’t. The ones that are on his payroll will stay out of the way.”

  “Great. Anything else?”

  Ruiz nodded slowly. “There’s something I think you should know.”

  Oh shit, Gaucho thought.

  Ruiz continued after making sure no one was within earshot. “I haven’t been completely honest with you.”

  Cal’s eyes narrowed. Gaucho had seen that look before. “Tell me.”

  Gaucho stared at his uncle.

  “Did Gaucho tell you how I came to my current…position?”

  Cal nodded.

  “Did he tell you about my girlfriend and the men I killed?”

  “He did.”

  “And he told you that I threatened him with his life.”

  “Yes.”

  Ruiz looked at his nephew, sadness etched into his weathered face. Gaucho had seen that look before. It was the Uncle Armando that he remembered from his childhood, the man who helped raise the fatherless Gaucho.

  “I had to do it,” he said.

  One plane engine sputtered to life and then another behind them.

  “Look, Mr. Ruiz, we’re a little short on time,” Cal said, glancing at Gaucho with a “where the hell is he going with this?” look.

  “Yes. I know. But I thought I should tell you in case something should happen.”

  Cal and Gaucho waited. What was the point of his uncle’s rambling?

  “I did come to Acapulco to start a new life. But when I got mixed up with the Guerrero Cartel, a DEA agent contacted me. He had informants within the organization and managed to save my life by warning me of an assassin who was coming to kill me. Well, once I took care of the assassin, the DEA agent offered me a job. He wanted me to play along with the cartel’s overtures. Without any other prospects, I said yes. Pretty soon I was in so deep that there wasn’t a chance I could leave. The DEA agent moved up the chain of command in his agency just as I did within the Guerrero Cartel. Sometimes we’d joke that one day I might take over everything. The first American to take over a drug cartel. Well, that joke became a reality. I had the shot, and I literally took it.

  “The troops respected me, and my Green Beret background gave us more clout. Even the guys I’d passed over thought the fact that I’d been American was the perfect “fuck you” to the Mexican government
and the United States. Well, I spent a long time reorganizing things. Murder is part of cartel life, but I forbade it when it came to civilians. I cleaned things up. It’s not perfect, but it’s a long way from where we were. Well, the whole time I was still sending reports to this DEA guy. In return, he’d provide us with intel on competitors and we’d seize the opportunity to raid or disrupt their operations. It was a win-win really. Things were going well. The Guerrero Cartel grew stronger with the help of more legitimate investments and new business. It doesn’t hurt that there are more crooked politicians on the local and national level than we could ever have on payroll.

  “So here I was, the lord of the land. Things were good. Violence was at an all-time low. I really thought that I was doing the right thing. It’s crazy to say, but I felt like I was home. What is it they say? Just when you’re comfortable everything goes to shit?” Ruiz chuckled. “Well it did. About a year and a half ago I found out the DEA agent I reported to had been killed in some raid in Ecuador. That would’ve been okay except that he was the only person who knew the truth. He was my handler, my benefactor and my only link to the United States. Without him I was stuck, stranded as the head of a drug organization in the middle of Mexico. I am a wanted man, a criminal.”

  As Gaucho listened, he saw the lies peel away. The masks his uncle had worn for so many years were slipping aside before his very eyes. If he hadn’t known his uncle as well as he did, he might not have believed him. But he saw the truth in his eyes. There was the man he’d revered as a hero, something superhuman to a boy at play.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Gaucho asked, wanting to embrace his uncle, but afraid that in doing so his own emotions might come spilling out.

  “How could I? Would you have believed me, especially after the last time we talked?”

  Gaucho understood now. It had all been a show for the cartel. His heart ached for all the years they’d lost, all the hateful thoughts he’d projected.

  “What will you do now?” Gaucho asked.

  Armando Ruiz shrugged. “Stay, I guess. What else can I do?”

  Gaucho didn’t have the answer. He looked over at Cal, who looked like he wasn’t convinced by Ruiz’s story. “What do you think? Is there anything we can do?”

  Cal didn’t answer right away. Instead he kept his eyes locked on Gaucho’s uncle. Finally he said, “Mr. Ruiz, if we get out of this alive and save the Pope, I’ll do everything I can to help you.”

  Now Ruiz didn’t look convinced. Gaucho had to remind himself that his uncle didn’t know what The Jefferson Group was or who they worked for.

  “Are you sure you could help? Do you know people in the American government?” Ruiz asked, a hint of hope in his voice.

  Cal grinned and said, “Yeah. I think I have a string or two I could pull.”

  Chapter 23

  En route to Mexicali, Mexico

  4:17am, March 15th

  El Moreno tried to watch Felix and his men with a dispassionate eye. He’d relayed the successful kidnapping with his typical downplay, but the Spaniards had worked themselves into a near frenzy. Even though they were crammed into the back of a repurposed delivery trailer, the extremists clapped their hands, raised them to the unseen sky along with their upturned faces, jabbering on in their adopted tongue. He couldn’t help but think how easy it would be to kill them. If this was religion, it was a complete waste.

  Not only were they rejoicing before their mission was complete, they looked like simple religious zealots. It was unprofessional and unsettling. El Moreno’s mind once again worked through his options. There had to be a way to take advantage of the situation. Felix and his fellow Spaniards were not elite warriors of Allah. They were recent civilians who’d been given minimal training stamped by whoever was really pulling the strings.

  He had to give it to them though. To concoct a scheme that could a) induce the Pope to fly to where they wanted, and b) bring only a scrap of his normal security, showed that someone in the jihadi chain of command knew what they were doing. Felix still hadn’t told him how they’d known so much, and that could only mean that they had a man, or multiple men, on the inside. The intelligence had been precise and one hundred percent correct. Felix had confirmed the covert contact at the last possible moment, a crucial piece of information that had to be relayed to El Moreno’s men in Calexico.

  The tricky part now was getting to Mexicali in time. He’d instructed his hired guns to throw a hood on their prize, to bind him, but not too tightly. All they knew was that the man in casual business attire was worth a tidy payday. The last thing he needed was for the mercenaries to get curious. Hopefully whomever Felix had on the inside would keep them at a safe distance. Besides, the professional kidnappers knew what El Moreno would do should his package be damaged. It shouldn’t matter what was under the hood. That was the cartel leader’s business, not theirs.

  Felix was hugging one of his compatriots, their eyes glistening with tears. El Moreno wanted to slap them and tell them to snap out of it. They had another two hours to go before reaching their destination and more to do once there. This mission was far from over.

  “Felix,” he said, trying to get the Spaniard’s attention. “Felix,” he repeated, a little louder this time, ignoring the annoyed looks from his own men.

  Felix turned, his face glowing. El Moreno motioned for his guest to come across the storage compartment and sit next to him on the short metal bench that ran the length of the trailer. The Spaniard complied without his usual reluctance to follow even the simplest of suggestions from his host.

  “Yes, my friend?” Felix said as he sat down.

  El Moreno knew he had to be careful. The Spaniard’s mood swings whipped in and out like an oversexed teenager. He was easily offended, a trait that had gotten countless up-and-comers killed for centuries untold.

  “We should be in Mexicali just after sunrise.”

  “Good, good. Then everything went as planned with our guest’s transfer across the border?” Felix couldn’t keep himself from grinning like a sugar-filled child.

  “Yes.”

  Felix nodded and even patted El Moreno on the shoulder, the first physical contact the two men had ever had. The Mexican resisted the urge to grab the man’s hand and wrench it away.

  “We will be heroes, you and I,” Felix said. “They will write songs about us. You should come visit my country. Everything will change after this.”

  He really believes that, El Moreno thought.

  “There is still much to do. Are you sure we can trust your man?”

  The smile slipped from Felix’s face for a second, but then he forced it back up.

  “You worry too much, my friend. He is worthy of our trust. He is one of Allah’s blessed.”

  The comment rolled right over El Moreno. He didn’t have time for spiritual nonsense.

  “Do you know him?”

  “Why should that matter?”

  “I only want us all to remember the potentially dangerous situation we may be stepping into. So far the American police still think it was a drug deal gone bad, but that could easily change, say, for example, should someone from Rome speak to the authorities.”

  Felix surprised El Moreno with his response.

  “You are correct. I will defer to your judgment until we take possession of our prize.”

  That was too easy.

  They still hadn’t discussed what would happen after they had the Pope in hand. Felix had requested video equipment and Internet access, so El Moreno could only guess that they were about to make the religious figurehead into a propaganda piece. But what about the children? What was their role? Something in him squirmed.

  “Tell me about the three-headed dragon,” El Moreno said, trying to sound casual.

  Felix’s eyes hardened.

  “Where did you hear that?”

  El Moreno shrugged.

  “I don’t remember. I think maybe you told me?”

  Felix searched the shorter man’
s face. He was too stupid to see through El Moreno’s facade. His smile returned, but this time it was strained.

  “Oh, that. Yes, it is just a nickname we have for the Americans, like how you call them gringos, no?”

  El Moreno saw right through the lie. Felix did not have the gift of masking his emotions while the Mexican was convinced that he could even fool God, if there was such a thing. He decided to play along.

  “I did not know that. I like it. I will have to use it.”

  Felix’s face relaxed, like a boy who’d just gotten away with a misdeed. El Moreno smiled, further putting the Spaniard at ease, but inside all he could think about was how he was going to take advantage of the masterful strategy the jihadis had employed. After all, how many ways could you use the Pope as a puppet?

  +++

  Felix returned to his seat, unease rattling in his head. The three-headed dragon. If his masters had been privy to the conversation, surely he would be dead. His father had pulled many strings to get Felix on this mission. He’d entrusted the family legacy to his son. His father, once a businessman nearing prominence, had slipped into hard times during the most recent worldwide economic collapse. Before that, religion had almost been an afterthought in their household.

  But the Islamic community had embraced his father, welcoming him and his children with open arms. Soon he had more business than he could have ever dreamed, with much more on the horizon. He said he owed it all to Islam, to Allah, to the prominent masters who’d put their faith in him.

  Before departing for South America and his journey to Mexico, Felix’s father opened up to his oldest son with emotion that the two men had never before shared.

  “This is a test, Felix. Allah is watching; he has chosen us to spread his message. With your bravery, and the courage of your brothers, the three-headed dragon will usher in a new era for our people.”