The Enemy Inside

by William Christie

  Temiraev smashed his fist onto the dashboard and let loose with another Russian oath. “Huyesos! ” Once again he did not bother to translate “cocksucker” into Arabic.

  “I will stop and let you out,” Nimri said calmly. “Not everyone. Finish it quickly and I will come back.”

  Temiraev responded with an enthusiastic blow to his arm that almost sent them off the road. He barked out a few quick orders.

  “After we go around the next curve,” said Nimri.

  It was just ahead. As soon as they made it Nimri stopped hard, skidding to a halt as the tires refused to bite into the dirt road.

  Temiraev and five other Chechens, including one of the machine gunners, poured out. Nimri was off again before the doors shut.

  The American police might be fools, but he knew that if he stopped in the middle of the road they would never approach him.

  Then he heard it. The same hailstorm of surprise fire that had greeted the helicopter. Nimri braked and turned around, driving carefully through the dust kicked up by his passage.

  “Prepare to give support fire,” he said to those in back. “But only when I order, and be sure of your targets.”

  As they drove up Nimri had to take off his goggles because the headlights of the police car were still on. It was black with a white hood and roof, and a map of Texas on the door. The windshield was so shattered he could not see inside.

  Temiraev was strutting back and forth in the road.

  “The lights, brother,” Nimri called out the window. “The headlights.”

  Temiraev waved happily and smashed them with the butt of his AK. Nimri realized that he should have said to turn the headlights off. “Make sure the computer is destroyed. And push it into the trees. Quickly.” A radio call must have been made.

  Another shot was fired as Temiraev made sure to disable the radio and computer in the noisiest way possible. The Chechens pushed the car off the road. Now Nimri could see inside as it rolled by. The policeman was still behind the wheel, staring up at the roof, his khaki uniform washed dark with blood.

  “Quickly, brothers. Quickly,” he urged.

  Temiraev herded his men back into the Expedition. He was happier than Nimri had seen him since that terrible basement in Antwerp. “A fine night’s work, brother Abdallah. More of the blood of our clan avenged.”

  “Keep watch for helicopters,” Nimri ordered the machine gunners, who were doing much boasting but little watching. “The rest of you, reload your magazines.”

  The talk subsided into grumbling, which Temiraev stopped with one sharp word of Chechen. “God is with us, brother,” he said to Nimri. It came out like a reproach.

  “All praise to God,” Nimri replied automatically. “But our mission, my brother, is not to drive about America shooting policemen. However satisfying that may be.”

  “It is all pleasing to God,” said Temiraev.

  Nimri said nothing. It was why the lands of America had not been struck in three years. The Faithful awaited God, rather than realizing that it was God who was awaiting the Faithful.

  He was amazed when they did not encounter any more police or helicopters.

  What Nimri didn’t know was that the original Border Patrol call for help had drawn every law enforcement agency in the region past them to the north. That Texas Highway Patrol cruiser had been racing along at the tail end of the surge. The trooper hadn’t been sure that he really had caught a glimpse of a black SUV on that dirt road, so he was waiting to get a positive identification and license number before calling it in. And had been killed instantly by the initial ambush volley.

  They eventually emerged from that dirt road onto Highway 83, where the goggles came off and the headlights on. And the machine gunners ducked back out of sight. They followed the highway south until it merged with Interstate 35. Nimri’s head ached and his eyes hurt. His neck felt like a piece of steel. The tension followed by this uneventful drive through the empty Texas night had drained him.

  They passed a highway rest area that Nimri examined for a suitable vehicle or two that they might exchange for the Expedition. Nothing.

  At the same time the horizon began to brighten ever so faintly, the highway rose slightly and the blinking lights of a city could be seen amid the surrounding darkness. After everything, they had come back almost full circle. To Laredo, Texas.

  “Keep your weapons away from the windows,” Nimri instructed them. “But be prepared for a roadblock.” They would certainly not pass any kind of close inspection. It would have to be another fight, with only the first moments of surprise and superior automatic firepower on their side.

  The signs on the highway said Del Mar, and then Laredo. The were many trucks, even at that hour, but no police. Nimri waited for the trap. Temiraev kept holding his goggles up to his eyes and scanning the sky for more helicopters. There was no sound in the vehicle except breathing. And the Chechens were definitely not asleep.

  The GPS directed him to exit the highway on the northern outskirts of the city. They drove west, toward where the Rio Grande wrapped itself around one side of Laredo like an anaconda. It was an industrial area.

  Nimri had learned his lesson about American neighborhoods. Too many eyes. Here there were businesses. And warehouses. Many warehouses.

  At a traffic light a police car crossed slowly in front of them, looking them over. Nimri could hear the Chechens shifting in their seats again, preparing themselves. But the patrol car continued on.

  They crossed train tracks. All the warehouses looked the same. In his tiredness Nimri strained to recall the directions. The correct cross street. There it was. An old wooden warehouse surrounded by a chain-link fence, topped with coils of razor wire. The fence gate was open. Nimri went through and waited, hoping he would not have to use the cell phone.

  A train whistle blew, as if right beside them. It made them all jump in their seats.

  Then, as if in a heroic tale, the sliding door of the warehouse opened to receive them. Nimri drove inside. God was truly with them. God was great.

  Chapter Twenty

  In Paraguay, Ed Storey knew it felt dangerous. The why was like a multiple choice exam. The undercurrent of illegality, the sensation of being too loud and too crowded, like everyone and everything was coming at him in waves. Now in Nuevo Laredo he knew exactly why border towns felt so dangerous. Because everyone, from the panhandlers and street vendors to the guy who sold him a newspaper, looked at him like they were trying to decide how much trouble it would be to take him off.

  Everything about the situation felt wrong, and he didn’t think it was the cumulative stress making him a little crispy around the edges. It wasn’t right, and more important it wasn’t professional.

  And lack of professionalism could get you killed. How many times had he seen someone fall back on that old military attitude and say: fuck it, let’s just get this over with?

  Why did Lund rent an office as soon as he got into town? It wasn’t like Paraguay—people didn’t just roll into Nuevo Laredo and go into business. You had to approach each country differently.

  Border towns tended to display all the clichés of both cultures. Nuevo Laredo was cinder-block architecture, run-down little kiosks in the open plazas, bullfight posters everywhere. And 7-Elevens and Pizza Huts.

  The rental car they’d picked up at the Monterrey airport was parked a quarter mile away. Storey and Troy were walking down the Avenue Obregon toward the office address Lund had messaged to them. Not walking side by side, shooting the shit, oblivious to everything around them, but on opposite sides of the street, Troy a ways back covering Storey like they were fighter pilots and he was the wingman.

  Storey had noticed the dark blue Lincoln Navigator when they’d passed it. There were plenty of SUVs around. But then there was the silver one at the other end of the street. Two Navigators with tinted windows wasn’t a coincidence. It was a major problem.

  Both SUVs were parked facing each other, with the office Lund had rented
almost exactly in the middle.

  Storey’s feeling about ambushes was that the best way to survive them was not let yourself get into the kill zone to begin with. And if you did find yourself there, to move your ass out of it as fast as you could. Because if the ambush had been done right, you weren’t going to be fighting your way out once it got sprung. He’d watched enough people try and fail in his own ambushes.

  If he was wrong, no harm done. They’d circle back and link up with Lund.

  Storey passed two subtle hand signals to Troy. “Danger” and “follow me.” Troy was already passing the danger signal back. He’d made the SUVs too. As Storey waited for his partner to cross the street, he was checking out immediate threats on foot. A couple of possibilities, but nothing definite. So he figured that if anything was going to happen, it would come from the SUVs.

  Storey walked into the closest shop, a tienda, or little mom-and-pop grocery store, running two fingers along the front of his shirt to open up the Velcro. He’d melted the Velcro with a lighter so it would open without that ripping sound.

  The owner seemed a little nervous that Storey still had his sunglasses on. “How may I help you?”

  Scanning with his peripheral vision, Storey saw that Troy was almost inside. “Where is your back door?” he asked politely in Spanish.

  “You cannot use the back door.”

  Now the Glock was in Storey’s hand. Troy saw it and his appeared also.

  “Take the money!” the proprietor yelped.

  Storey was already around the counter. He grabbed the Mexican by the collar and aimed him through the open doorway. “The back door, if you please.”

  In the storeroom the owner had to fumble around with his keys to get the door open. In Mexico thieves were the main problem—you paid off the fire inspector. He got it unlocked, and was about to push it open when Storey yanked back on his collar and slung him over to Troy.

  Storey carefully and quietly opened the door a crack and peeked out. There was a red Chevy Suburban, also with tinted windows, parked about twenty feet down the alley. But not loading or unloading, not with that pile of cigarette butts under the driver’s window.

  A major part of the training was to blot out the usual torrent of irrelevant questions: who are they; how did it happen; what had happened to Lund and his team? Questions were always a mechanism to avoid focusing on the difficult matters at hand.

  They were boxed in, and the box was going to be closing even tighter pretty soon. Troy told the proprietor, “Sit down on the floor and be quiet.” Then he took a look through the door, seeing exactly what Storey had. Going back out to the street didn’t strike him as a good idea. Whoever was in the two SUVs, they weren’t going to care about how many civilians got caught in the cross fire. He and Storey weren’t going to be running up or down that alley—it was a shooting gallery. The only way was to go over the cinder-block wall on the opposite side. But no matter how fast their climbing, their asses were still going to be hanging out while they did it.

  He held a whispered discussion about this with Storey. Which illustrated the ambiguity of their situation, and Storey’s own indecision. Usually Storey would have made his move and expected him to follow.

  “Check out the front window,” Storey said. He’d rather cross the street and go out the back of another store—that alley might not be covered—than get in a shootout he didn’t have to. Because no matter how good you might be, nobody was ever guaranteed a win.

  Troy returned a moment later. “You ever see more than one twenty-something guy hanging around on the street carrying a shopping bag?”

  “Not unless they got weapons in it. Arabs?”

  “Mexicans.”

  “Shit.” That was why there was so many of them. And they probably wouldn’t be worried about making a lot of noise. The cops wouldn’t be showing up in the middle of this one.

  “The longer we wait, the worse the odds are going to get,” said Troy.

  “The alley it is,” said Storey. “Only one vehicle out here.” They had a quick exchange of views. Storey snatched up an empty cardboard box to conceal his pistol in. And just before he went out the door said, “There’s probably someone up on the roof.”

  He walked out into the alley, the cardboard box tucked under his arm, briefly turning full-face toward the Suburban just to see what would happen.

  The engine immediately came on. So they were made, and the opposition had radios.

  The Suburban lunged forward. A figure popped up from the sunroof, firing. He would have done better to wait until his sights were on target before hosing off that first burst, because Storey was familiar with the sound of AK rounds cracking by and he was already looking through his front sight. He fired the mini Glock almost as fast as the AK on full auto. After the fourth round the Mexican in the sunroof slumped forward, and the AK went clattering down the side of the Suburban.

  Storey immediately dropped his sight picture to where the driver would be behind the windshield tint, and tapped out two more fast rounds. No stars and holes in the glass as he’d expected—the bullets just splattered on it. Bulletproof polycarbonate. Shit.

  The driver tried to run him down, but despite the movies it isn’t easy to hit someone who knows you’re coming. The turning radius of an SUV is much greater than that of a human. Even though the driver swerved at him, Storey stepped away like a matador dodging a bull. As the Suburban passed he fired a round into each of the side tires. They were probably the run-flat type, but it would make the SUV harder to handle.

  As Storey was ducking away, another Mexican with a rifle appeared through the sunroof. As he leaned over the side to fire down at Storey Lee Troy shot him in the back from the doorway.

  After that Storey expected the driver to hightail it down the alley, but instead he threw it into reverse and came at him again. Storey kept his eye on the sunroof. All the windows were still closed, which meant the polycarbonate was too thick to roll down.

  The driver hadn’t seen Troy and hadn’t heard the shot that killed the second rifleman. He was looking over his seat and concentrating on Storey.

  As the Suburban backed toward him, Storey didn’t wait to dodge as before but ran toward it faster than the driver could cut the wheel, sprinting past and putting himself in front of it again.

  The driver braked to a halt, the rubber of the two shot-out tires flapping on the pavement. As he paused to shift into drive again, Troy ran out of the doorway, leaped up on the running board, stuck his arm in through the sunroof, and blew the driver’s brains onto the bulletproof glass.

  Two rifles opened fire from the roof of the building. Troy launched himself through the sunroof, landing on both the driver and the other dead Mexican shooter. Shit, Storey had said to watch the goddamned roof.

  Storey dashed for the cover of the side of the building, to cut down on their angle. An AK and an M-16. Their sounds were as distinct as the calls of two different species of birds.

  Troy thrashed around in the front seat, trying to yank the driver out of the way so he could get behind the wheel. The driver’s foot came off the brake and the Suburban shot back. It hit the wall on the other side of the alley, almost knocking him into the backseat. Goddammit!

  Storey wondered what Troy was doing. Could there be another live Mexican in the SUV, that he was going hand to hand with? He stuck his head out a bit, almost risking a run across the alley. But the two automatic rifles on the roof opened up again.

  Troy didn’t worry about shifting; he went back to the dead Mexican. But whoever said that about dead weight wasn’t kidding. There was blood all over the inside of the car, and brains splattered across the windshield. A couple of rounds came through the open sunroof, hitting the dash and ricocheting off the windshield. Shit! He twisted around and hit the button to close the sunroof.

  Storey was pressed up against the wall, waiting for Troy to do something with the SUV. He didn’t have a shot at the roof without exposing himself, and wasn’t all that a
nxious to do that anyway with his pistol against two rifles. Troy needed to get a move on. They couldn’t sit in that alley all day, and reinforcements—not theirs—would be arriving very soon.

  Troy finally pulled the driver out of the way, and as he sat down behind the wheel the sunroof exploded over his head. The one part of the fucking car that wasn’t bulletproof had to be right over his fucking head as they were shooting down at him.

  Plastering himself against the driver’s door, he shifted into drive and aimed the Suburban across the alley at Storey. Fewer rounds came in through the sunroof while he was moving, but they still kept coming in. Until he reached the dead space on the side of the building.

  The driver’s door opened up and Storey dove across Troy’s lap. He crawled across and found himself atop two dead Mexicans.

  “Watch your fucking feet!” Troy yelled as Storey spun around to get himself upright.

  Troy stepped on the gas, heading for the cross street at the end of the alley.

  Rounds thudded into the back of the Suburban. Storey looked over his shoulder. Three or four Mexicans coming out of doorways, shooting down the alley at them. Probably the ones who’d been waiting inside the office.

  With the gas pedal on the floor and driving on two good tires and two hard run-flat inserts, Troy was fighting to keep the Suburban from wobbling all over the alley. “Left or right when we get to the end?”

  “I’d go right. Left is the street we came from.” Storey had climbed over into the backseat and was gathering up the one AK and all the magazines he could find. The other AK was out in the alley somewhere.

  Troy was recalling the map he’d studied, trying to orient a route to one of the border crossings and back into the USA. Shit, they just needed to head north.

  Then the dark blue Navigator pulled to a stop right in front of the alley exit.

  “Brace yourself!” Troy bellowed. Fighting the wheel one-handed, he grabbed the seat belt with his left hand, dragging it across his body and snapping it in.