by Scott McEwen
He knew from the mission dossier that her name was Lena Deiss, a Swiss national, age thirty, and that she came from a wealthy family. A member of the jet set, she valued a man who could accommodate her lavish lifestyle and keep her entertained. In addition to alpine skiing, she enjoyed other adrenaline sports such as skydiving and car racing.
The harshness of her gaze this evening was a change from what Gil had seen over the past few nights around the lodge. She was not her usual happy self. She looked pissed, and Gil guessed that she and Blickensderfer had argued. He didn’t care. Blickensderfer wasn’t going to be a problem for anyone a whole lot longer.
Lena accepted her cocktail and turned from the bar, making steam straight for his table. He glanced involuntarily over his shoulder, hoping he’d misjudged her heading, but there wasn’t anyone seated behind him.
“Shit,” he muttered, exhaling as he adjusted his posture to crush out the cigarette in an ashtray on the table.
Lena’s look lost its severity as she approached the table and smiled. “I haven’t seen you on the slopes all week,” she said in perfect English. She sipped from the martini, the color of her crimson lipstick unmistakable at his range. “Yet I’ve seen you here in the lodge every night.”
Clearing his throat, Gil recalled the .308 that had nearly severed her spinal column only hours before. “I keep to the easier runs. I’m more of a novice.”
“May I sit down?”
“Sure,” he said, feeling himself quicken. He’d been separated from his wife, Marie, for more than a year now and hadn’t been with anyone else in all that time.
She reached for his pack of cigarettes, her eyes questioning.
He nodded and picked up the lighter as she poked a cigarette between her lips. He lit it for her with the Zippo, and she sat back, exhaling through tightly pursed lips.
“You’re married,” she said, a little sad suddenly. “I can tell.”
He smiled in spite of himself. “Separated, actually.”
“American?”
“Canadian,” he said quickly.
She took a drag from the cigarette. “I don’t blame you for lying. I imagine you’re better received as a Canadian when you travel.”
He chuckled. “What makes you think I’m lying?”
A hint of her sternness returned. “I spent a year with a man who served with the British SAS. You have his same restless look, so if you’re really Canadian, you must be a soldier—and not just an ordinary one.”
Gil realized that Marie would have this same kind of intuition about any Special Forces operative that she would meet, so he decided to meet Lena halfway, taking his Canadian passport from his back pocket and setting it on the table. “I’m retired from the CSOR.”
She reached for the passport. “Which is?”
“Canadian Special Operations Regiment.”
She opened the passport to read his name. “So I guess that’s a point for me then, isn’t it, Conner MacLoughlin?”
He took a moment to light a cigarette for himself, tossing the lighter onto the table. “Are we keeping score?”
She was looking him in the eyes. “Would you like to keep score?”
Fuck it, he thought to himself. “Yes, I would. What’s your name?”
“I’m Lena.” She offered her hand.
The spark of chemistry was instantaneous, and Gil knew he was in trouble. “Where are the men I’ve seen you with?”
“They’re upstairs with their cigars, playing cards.” Her annoyance was palpable. “One of them is my fiancé. Does that bother you?”
He took a drag. “Should it?”
She shrugged, tipping an ash into the ashtray. “He’s a rich and powerful man—or so many people believe.”
“Do you?”
She shrugged again. “Money is power—and he has more than most people can imagine.”
Gil took a drink. “You’re pissed he left you alone tonight.”
She smiled wryly. “But I’m not alone.”
“His men carry guns. I’m not lookin’ to get shot.”
Lena laughed. “Is that something you worry about?”
“Always,” he said, shaping the ash against the rim of the ashtray.
Twenty minutes later, they stood naked before one another at the foot of Gil’s bed, and Lena was touching the battle scars that covered his muscular torso. “My,” she whispered, feeling a warmth between her legs. “The things you must have seen and done.”
“You don’t wanna know the things I’ve seen and done.” He slid his left hand behind her neck, taking one of her full breasts in his right to give it a firm squeeze, softly thumbing the nipple. She sighed and put her head back as he laid her down on the bed, kissing her lustfully and allowing the animal within him to run free.
As he prepared to mount her, she placed her hands on his chest. “Stop.”
He stopped. “Something wrong?”
“I should warn you.” She swallowed, her ardor burning. “I should tell you that—that I think you’re about to make a very dangerous enemy.”
“How so?”
“What I mean is that I think you’re about to give me reason to cancel a very expensive wedding.”
He laughed and pushed gently inside of her, burying his face in the golden storm of her hair. She gasped and dug her heels into the small of his back, clawing the flesh of his ass.
“What a fool,” she moaned softly.
“Who?” he whispered.
“The one down the hall.” She sank her fingers into his hair, nipping at his ear. “The one losing to me in a fucking card game.”
8
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO
10:00 HOURS
Agent Mike Ortega of the CIA arrived at ten sharp the next morning. He was a big guy with broad shoulders, dark brown eyes, and a thin mustache. The Mexican American carried himself with an arrogance that annoyed Crosswhite the moment he opened the door. Agent Mendoza, the PFM agent who had saved Vaught’s life, stood just behind him, dressed in regular clothes now, his face turned to watch the door to the enclosed carport, his oversized Adam’s apple protruding.
“You’re Crosswhite?” Ortega asked.
“Right.”
Ortega offered his hand. He was one of those guys who felt it necessary to half crush the other guy’s hand during a handshake, but he realized at once that Crosswhite’s grip was at least as strong as his own. This surprised him, given that Crosswhite stood a head shorter and was built on a lighter frame. “I understand you’ve already met Agent Mendoza.”
“I have.” Crosswhite shook his hand as well. “Bienvenido.” Welcome.
“Is Vaught still here?” Ortega asked.
“In the living room.” Crosswhite motioned the two inside.
Vaught stood waiting in the center of the room and shook hands with both men. There was a moment of mild tension between him and Mendoza, but it seemed to pass quickly enough.
“Sorry I couldn’t make it over here last night,” Ortega said. “This is my first time at bat in this kind of operation, and it’s taken some time to get the kinks ironed out. They’re still not ironed out completely, but I’m afraid there’s going to be a lot of OJT for everyone involved.”
Paolina came out of the bedroom with Valencia in her arms, crossing the living room to take a seat on the sofa and set Valencia down beside her.
Ortega watched her for a moment, looking at Crosswhite. “Okay, look, we can’t have indigenous personnel sitting in on this conversation, so she’s going to have to step out for a while.”
Paolina didn’t understand what had been said, but she knew from her husband’s face that she had been insulted in some way, and she prepared for him to lose his temper.
“First of all,” Crosswhite said, “she’s not indigenous. She’s Cuban. And second of all, she’s my w
ife. You got that, asshole?”
Ortega took offense immediately. “Hey, we’re all on the same side here, fella.”
Crosswhite stared back at him.
Vaught glanced at Paolina, who sat watching passively, almost as though she knew what was about to happen.
“Well, suit yourself,” Ortega said, openly annoyed. “If you don’t mind endangering her life, I don’t see why I should.”
Crosswhite struck him with a closed fist just above the right eye to send Ortega reeling backward across the room. The CIA agent stumbled over the recliner and crashed heavily to the floor against the wall.
Vaught and Mendoza looked at each other in shock, eyes wide as Crosswhite stepped between them to stand over the bigger man lying on the floor between the wall and the overturned chair. “Either you apologize right now, or I kill you.”
Ortega’s impulse was to get up and pound Crosswhite into the floor, but there was a fury in the smaller man’s eyes that told him he’d better not even try it. “You’re fucking crazy. Do you know that?”
“I’m not gonna tell you again,” Crosswhite said. “And you’d better hurry, because Fields is about ten seconds away from needing to find another goddamn station chief.”
“Okay, I apologize!” Ortega snapped, rubbing his forehead, where a slight goose egg was already beginning to form. “I meant no offense. I was only trying to protect her.”
Vaught glanced again at Paolina, who hadn’t taken her eyes off of Crosswhite the entire time.
Crosswhite pointed at the overturned recliner, saying to Ortega, “That’s your chair.” He turned to Mendoza, calming himself and indicating the far end of the sofa. “Por favor, siéntese,” he said easily. “Nuestra casa es su casa.” Please sit down. Our house is your house.
Mendoza smiled at him, saying, “Gracias” and moved to take a seat.
Crosswhite sat down in the center of the sofa between Mendoza and Paolina as Vaught gave Ortega a hand, hauling the big man to his feet and helping to right the overturned recliner.
Vaught turned to Crosswhite. “Can I bring a chair from the kitchen?”
Crosswhite nodded, and Vaught went into the kitchen. Paolina followed him. Vaught returned with a chair made of leather and split tree branches called an equipal. Paolina returned a minute later with a plastic bag of ice, which she gave to the embarrassed Ortega.
“Gracias,” he said quietly, putting the bag against the swelling over his eye.
“You’re welcome,” she said in heavily accented English, sitting back down beside Crosswhite and pulling Valencia into her lap.
Crosswhite wasn’t the slightest bit apologetic or uncomfortable. Fields had said to him the night before: “It’s important that you impress upon Ortega from the start that this is not his operation. It is my operation, and nothing less than his one hundred percent cooperation will be acceptable.”
Crosswhite felt he had done a fair job of establishing the hierarchy of who shit where in the woods, while at the same time making it clear to everyone present that Paolina wasn’t to be regarded as anything less than the lady of the house.
“So where were we?” Ortega said timidly, understanding Crosswhite’s utter lack of respect for him must have meant that he was well protected from on high—very probably by Pope himself. He switched to Spanish for Mendoza’s benefit, addressing Vaught: “I’m the one who requested the Operational Immediate putting you under the aegis of the CIA.”
“Oh, then fuck you very much!” Vaught retorted in English.
Mendoza chuckled, apparently knowing enough English to understand that much.
“I’m sorry,” Ortega said, “but I believed then, as I do now, that it’s extremely important. Lazaro Serrano is simply too high up in the Mexican government to let this opportunity pass—not to mention, he’s very probably the one who ordered the assassination of Alice Downly. If he didn’t order it, then he certainly made it possible. What I don’t understand, however, is why Langley doesn’t want this handled by Mexico station. My people are more than capable of handling the logistics of such an op and providing you a safe place to stay.”
Vaught cleared his throat, glancing at Crosswhite. “Well, my new friend here has already explained the reasoning behind that—at least he has to me.”
Ortega wasn’t interested in making eye contact with Crosswhite. “Then Mr. Crosswhite is privy to information that hasn’t been made available to me.” Crosswhite offered no explanation because Ortega wasn’t cleared to know about the ATRU. Ortega turned his gaze on Mendoza. “Agent Mendoza?”
Mendoza leaned forward, pressing his palms together. “The PFM agrees this is very, very important,” he began in Spanish. “We’ve suspected Serrano for some time, but there’s never been any evidence against him before now.” He looked up at Vaught. “The PFM is pleased with what you’ve done. You’ve helped to shed light on the corruption inside the Federal Police, and you’ve given us our first real evidence against Lazaro Serrano.”
Vaught always knew when his balls were being buttered. “Yesterday you were pissed I’d blown your cover. What’s changed?”
Mendoza sat back. “My point of view. Yesterday I had just killed five men. I had never killed anyone before, and I was very affected by it. The true purpose of a deep-cover operation is to obtain information, to obtain evidence, and had you not taken action yesterday, I never would have been in a position to witness Serrano order a murder with my own eyes. That action alone proves he is far more than complicit—he is an actual decision maker within the cartels. This is very significant information. Also, if not for you, I would not have been there to confirm the existence of the gringo sniper. Until now, this man has only been a ghost—always rumored, never seen. So today it is obvious to me and to my superiors that you have done Mexico a service.
“Now we must plan together how best to use this information to our mutual advantage. It is true we can arrest Serrano for ordering your murder, but he has powerful allies, and our word might not be enough to gain a conviction on this charge alone. Our court system does not work the same as in the US—there are no juries, for example—so it would be best to draw Serrano into a trap; to find a way for the PFM to catch him in the act of conspiring with known cartel members.”
“And exactly how do you plan on doing that?” Vaught asked.
“Right now we have two distinct advantages,” Mendoza went on. “One, he has no idea that we now know for certain what he is. Two, he thinks you’re dead. Tomorrow the PFM will announce that your body was found in a building along with the bodies of five known cartel members. No one will be sure of exactly what happened because a grenade blast will have left the crime scene impossible to decipher. This will put you out of Serrano’s mind. Then, when the time is right, after he has forgotten all about you, you can magically reappear—but only at a moment when he has begun to feel vulnerable in other ways. The idea is to scare him into making a mistake.”
“So you’re planning to apply pressure in the meantime,” Crosswhite said.
Mendoza grinned. “Yes. Pressure creates stress, and men under stress are prone to making mistakes at crucial moments. Up until this point, Serrano has lived a stress-free existence, with little more to worry about than which woman to take to bed on a given night. With your help, Agent Vaught, we’re going to change that.”
“And the gringo sniper?” Vaught asked.
Mendoza turned to look at Crosswhite, saying in slightly accented English, “I understand you’ve had some experience in this area, Agent Crosswhite. Or is my information incorrect?”
Crosswhite looked around the room, chuckling under the collective gaze. “Well, hey, I’m just here to provide the beer on this one. I’m not going operational.”
Paolina was staring hard at Mendoza, her eyes like brown bullets.
“Yes,” Mendoza continued, switching back to Spanish, “I understand,
but the PFM would very much appreciate your help in this operation. We feel it’s time you gave something back to Mexico in exchange for the unfettered privacy you have enjoyed as a guest in our country.”
Crosswhite glanced at Paolina, who now looked like she wanted to claw out Mendoza’s eyeballs. Then he looked back at the PFM agent and laughed. “Yeah, okay, sure. I’d love a chance to give back.”
“Excellent,” Mendoza said, rubbing his palms on his knees. “Mexico is grateful for your generosity.”
Vaught snickered, leaning across the coffee table to offer Crosswhite his hand. “Welcome to the team, champ.”
Paolina jerked the stun gun from between the sofa cushions and leapt over the table after him. Crosswhite grabbed her around the waist as Vaught shoved himself over backward in the equipal, only narrowly avoiding the outstretched weapon, its cruel blue arc of electricity snapping and crackling in the air as Crosswhite swung her around with a “Whoa!” and lifted her off the floor, setting her down safely on the far side of the room and blocking her path. “Easy, baby.”
9
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO
10:30 HOURS
The next morning, Lazaro Serrano was eating breakfast on the patio behind his expansive home. A young woman in a green-and-red bikini swam in the pool, pushing around a Chihuahua on a small rubber raft. The little dog was barking at her and wagging its tail, and she was laughing and calling for Serrano to look. He smiled and waved and went on eating. He was fifty years old with a belly and thinning hair, bushy eyebrows, and a thick black mustache.
Oscar Martinez, his chief assistant and confidant, came onto the patio with the morning edition of El Universal and sat down across from Serrano; one of the servants had already set a place for him. He was a slender man in his midforties, with a head of thick, dark hair and a boyish face that easily shaved ten years off his age. “The body of the American DSS agent has been found,” he said, sipping from a porcelain coffee cup.