by Scott McEwen
The gringo whipped around like a blur, delivering a vicious overhand right to Memo’s chin. Memo went down like he’d been hit by a sniper, and the gringo spun back around, bashing the lunging Fito in the face with his left elbow.
Fito saw stars, crashing to his knees with one of his front teeth broken off at the gum line.
The gringo grabbed him by the hair and bashed him again with his fist, busting his nose and shoving him over against the gate to the carport. A quick search, and he found Fito’s silenced .22 Ruger pistol.
He stuck the muzzle down the front of Fito’s pants and squeezed the trigger. The pistol went off with a hiss, and Fito felt the hot .22 caliber round ricochet off the sidewalk into his buttock.
He shouted in pain, grabbing his ass.
“Looks like I missed!” the gringo sneered, adjusting the muzzle.
“Don’t!” Fito gasped, grabbing the gringo’s wrist in fear for his testicles.
“What the fuck are you doin’ here?” the gringo growled.
Fito began to blab, telling all that he knew.
“Where’s Fields now?”
“Tijuana.”
“Who does he want you to kill in Tijuana?”
“I don’t know. He hasn’t told us yet.”
Knowing it would be dangerous to leave a pair of dead men on the sidewalk, the gringo stood up, delivering Fito a brutal knee to the face. Fito slouched over, unconscious. The gringo wiped his fingerprints from the pistol with the tail of his shirt, tossed the weapon over the carport wall, and disappeared down the street.
64
TOLUCA, MEXICO
18:00 HOURS
Officer Robles appeared in the doorway to Chief Diego’s office. He was in his late twenties, a clean-cut-looking kid. “Sergeant Cuevas said you wanted to see me, Chief?”
“Go see Agent Vaught out back,” Diego said, seemingly preoccupied with paperwork. “He requested you ride with him tonight.”
“Sí, señor.”
A few minutes later, Robles found Vaught waiting for him in the back of an armored black-and-white pickup truck. The truck bed was enclosed with a roll cage, which allowed officers to stand up during patrol and to rail-mount a light machine gun. He climbed up into the back dressed in his SWAT gear and shook Vaught’s hand. “Thank you for requesting me.”
“Sure,” Vaught said, pulling the black balaclava up over his face. “We’re expecting trouble tonight, and I want a good man with me.” He reached out and took the helmet from Robles’s head. “Better let me trade with you. Your helmet’s marked up.”
“No, it’s okay,” Robles said, reaching for his helmet back. “It fits my head.”
“It’s cool,” Vaught said, strapping the helmet on. “We wear the same size.”
Sergeant Cuevas climbed into the back of the truck, donned his helmet, and pulled up his balaclava. “Better put that helmet on,” he said to Robles. “We’re patrolling the north side.”
The north side of town was the worst, the area where they suspected the gringo sniper to be hiding among Ruvalcaba’s people.
“We’re going to draw the sniper’s fire,” Vaught said with a grin. “Try to flush him out.”
“I’d like to have my helmet back,” Robles said, his good humor beginning to fade. “I don’t like wearing other people’s helmets.”
Vaught laughed. “Don’t worry about it. I don’t have lice.”
“I’m serious,” Robles said, putting his hand out. “Give me my helmet.”
The driver of the truck got out of the cab and stood watching.
“Sorry,” Vaught said. “I’m keeping the helmet.”
Robles looked at Sergeant Cuevas. “Tell him to give me my helmet.”
“Why?” Cuevas asked. “What’s so special about it?”
“It’s mine. I have the right to wear my own equipment.”
“It belongs to the department,” Cuevas said. “I’ve reassigned it to Agent Vaught.” He took the other helmet from Vaught’s hand and thrust it toward Robles. “I’ve reassigned this one to you. Now put it on. We’re patrolling the north side.”
Robles stood looking between the two men, realizing he’d been discovered. “I quit.” He turned to dismount the truck, but Sergeant Cuevas whacked him over the head with the Kevlar helmet, and he went down.
The driver jumped into the back, and the three men wrestled Robles into a pair of handcuffs. Then Sergeant Cuevas produced a roll of duct tape and taped Robles’s mouth shut. They pulled the balaclava over his face and stood him up, shackling his hands to the roll bar behind the machine gun, making him look like the gunner—the first man the sniper would likely shoot. Vaught put the helmet on Robles’s head and pulled the chin strap good and tight.
“It’s you and me tonight, baby!” He turned to Sergeant Cuevas, switching back to Spanish. “You’d better dismount, Sergeant. There’s no sense giving the sniper more than one target to choose from. We’ll let our man Robles here take all the risks.”
Robles shook his head furiously, protesting as best he could with his mouth taped shut.
Vaught drew a razor-sharp folding knife from his harness and pressed the point to Robles’s throat. “You’d better stand up and face this like a man.”
Robles began to cry, shaking his hands, begging to be set free.
Revolted by the traitor’s cowardice, Sergeant Cuevas stepped into him, kneeing him in the groin. Robles sagged against the back of the cab with a groan and threw up in his mouth. They had to peel the tape off fast to prevent him from aspirating: sucking vomit into his lungs.
He retched once more, and they allowed him to cough himself out before applying a new strip of tape. This time Robles made no attempt to protest his fate.
“You earned this,” Vaught said, pulling the balaclava up to hide the younger man’s face. “So accept what you have coming. If you fuck this up, I will stab you, I swear to God.”
Sergeant Cuevas got into a black-and-white Dodge Charger with three other officers, and both vehicles rolled out, with the pickup in the lead.
65
TIJUANA, MEXICO
22:15 HOURS
Mariana hadn’t had too much trouble getting Billy Jessup to notice her in the nightclub. The trouble was getting him to un-notice the twins sitting three tables over, where they pretended to be interested in the half dozen inebriated young men vying heavily for their attention.
“Those two seem to be distracting you,” she said, drinking from a bottle of Tecate beer.
“I’m sorry,” Jessup said with a laugh, embarrassed to be called on the carpet for gawking. “I just don’t see that every day.”
His Spanish had turned out to be too poor to carry on a conversation, forcing Mariana to talk to him in accented English, which required a conscious effort on her part to keep from breaking character. “You don’t see what every day?”
He laughed again. “They’re just really hot.”
“And I’m not?”
“Yeah,” he said. “You’re beautiful. It’s just . . .” He laughed again, sounding more stupid each time. “There’s just different kinds of pretty, that’s all.”
“So you prefer women who look like putas?” Sluts.
Again the annoying laugh. “I don’t know if that’s what I said.”
“Well, go over and talk to them. That’s obviously where you want to be.”
He turned his back to the far table. “No, this is where I want to be. Your English is very good. Where did you learn?”
“I’ve lived on the border all my life. My whole family speaks English.”
“Do you like the US?”
She nodded. “What are you doing in Mexico?”
“I’ve been doing some consulting.”
“Consulting?” She put on her most interested face. “My brother’s a consultant i
n DF. What kind of consulting do you do?”
“Well, it’s not . . .” He hadn’t counted on her knowing a damn thing about consulting. “It’s more like security work—security consulting.”
“For banks and things like that?”
“No, no.” He took a drink from his beer. “More like, um . . . more like bodyguard-type work.”
“For politicians?”
He chuckled. “Sort of.”
“What do you mean, ‘Sort of’?”
“Well, I don’t know . . . just sort of.” He laughed again.
She gave his sizeable biceps a squeeze, noting the bottom part of a military tattoo sticking out beneath the sleeve. “You’re a mercenary, aren’t you?”
Jessup knew women well enough to know they didn’t start squeezing on you unless they were at least contemplating taking off their clothes. “Suppose I am?”
She shrugged, offering a flirtatious smile. “Suppose you are?”
“Would that bother you?”
“I guess it depends.”
“On what?”
She sat forward into the table, making the moment more intimate. “If I decide to fuck you at some point in the future, and I find out you’re down here working for the DEA . . . or the ATF . . .”—she took a drink, and her expression turned almost vicious—“I’ll cut your fucking balls off in your fucking sleep.”
Jessup felt himself stiffen inside his jeans. “Believe me, the last people on earth I work for is the ATF or the fucking DEA.”
“Because the people I work for,” she went on, “they don’t fucking play. Do you understand?”
He took a drink and set down the bottle. “And just who do you work for?”
“Way too soon.” She sat back. “But he’s the kind of man who’d feed us both to the fucking sharks if I hooked up with you and you turned out to be a fucking narc. I got rules I have to follow.”
He pushed the beer aside. “You wanna get outta here?”
She smiled. “Again, corazón, way too soon. There’s no way I’m fucking you tonight, so relax. I don’t even know your real name.”
“Yes, you do.” He dug his California driver’s license from his wallet and put it on the table. “See, Billy Jessup.”
Mariana looked at it. “Your name is actually Billy. Not William?”
“I was named after my daddy. His name was William, but everybody called him Billy.”
“I like that,” she said thoughtfully. “I think you should name a kid what you’re gonna call him.”
Realizing he wasn’t going to get laid, Jessup pushed aside his disappointment and settled in for conversation. “So do you want kids?”
“Sometimes. You?”
He shrugged. “I’d like to have a son. But a daughter would be okay.”
She could see he was telling her the truth. “It doesn’t sound to me like you’re in a position to start a family right now.”
“I can quit whenever I want. Nobody owns me.”
“Must be nice.” She put on her sad face and took a drink from her beer.
“What, you can’t quit?”
She pretended to force a smile. “We don’t know each other well enough, Billy. You don’t know the kind of people I work for.”
“I’m not stupid,” he said. “You work for the cartels, and we’re in the North—which means you work for Castañeda.”
She looked suddenly angry. “Liar! You are with the DEA!” She stole a look around the club. “You’re gonna get me killed!” She grabbed her purse and began to get up.
The second he grabbed her arm to stop her, she knew she had him.
“I don’t work for the DEA, okay? I work for Ruvalcaba.”
Mariana stole another quick glance around, lowering herself back into the chair. “That’s even worse!” she hissed. “What are you doing up here? Trying to get yourself killed?”
“Well, I don’t exactly work for him anymore. I quit a few days ago.”
“Just like that? And you’re not scared to be walking around Mexico?”
“They don’t really care about me. They care about my partner; he’s the one who’s important.”
She pushed up the sleeve of his T-shirt to get a good look at his Airborne Ranger tattoo. “Are you the one I’ve heard rumors about?”
He shook his head. “No, that’s not me; that’s my partner.”
“So it’s true,” she said quietly. “There is a gringo sniper.”
He drank from his beer. “It’s true, all right. And he’s not really anybody you’d wanna meet.”
66
TIJUANA, MEXICO
23:00 HOURS
Fields couldn’t believe his eyes.
“I send you two jamokes to do a job that should have taken you two minutes, and this is how you come back looking? What did you do, pick a fight with Manny Pacquiao?”
Fito was humiliated and angry, his broken tooth hurting him, but he resisted the urge to smart off, knowing they’d fucked up big-time. “A gringo showed up.”
“What gringo?”
“I don’t know. We’ve never seen him before.”
Fields sat looking back and forth between them. “One man did this to you? Why didn’t you shoot him?”
Fito looked at the floor. “He took my gun.”
“Took your gun.”
“He was a professional.”
“I’m sure he was,” Fields remarked. He described Crosswhite, but the cousins looked at each other, shaking their heads.
“No, he didn’t look anything like that,” Fito said. “This man had light-brown hair and light-colored eyes—almost gray.”
Fields had no clue who else it could have been. He looked at Memo. “What about you? You don’t talk anymore?”
Memo looked at the floor.
“His jaw’s broken,” Fito said. “We just came from the hospital. They wired it shut.”
“This is fabulous.” Fields got up from the edge of the bed in his hotel room. “One looks like he was hit by a truck, and the other one’s a mute.” He let out a sigh, longing for the days of the Cold War, when professional assets were plentiful and Congress never asked any hard questions.
“Listen,” he said, turning around. “There’s a woman in town; she’s getting some information from a contact. Once I’ve got the intel, you’re going to dispose of her. Is that clear?”
“How soon?”
“Within the next couple of days, but I’m having doubts as to whether or not you can even handle a girl.”
“We can handle her!” Fito insisted. “We just got surprised by this guy. You didn’t tell us there might be some crazy gringo running around down there.”
“Well, you’d better be able to handle her,” Fields said. “Because I’m not paying a dime for the ass kicking you two clowns received today. Did you even get into the house?”
“Yes!” Memo said through clenched teeth.
“I got in through an unlocked door on the roof,” Fito lied. “The house was empty.”
“This was before or after your spanking?”
Fito averted his eyes. “Before.”
Fields opened a file on his laptop, showing them photos of both Mariana and Jessup. “Here is a list of bars and clubs. That’s the motel he’s staying at. I don’t know where she’s staying yet, but she’s stalking him, so go find her and stay on her! Do nothing—and I mean nothing—until you’re given the word. Is that clear?”
“Yes.”
“About this gringo you ran into . . .” Fields stood thinking. “Did he say why he was there? Did you tell him anything—anything at all?”
Fito shook his head. “We just asked him what he was doing there, and he sucker punched Memo. I went for my gun, but he was too fast.”
When the boys from Baja were gone, Fields
called Pope on the secure satellite phone.
“We’ve got a new player,” Fields said. “The Baja boys ran into a gringo outside Ortega’s place. He literally beat them up on the sidewalk in front of the house and left them lying there.”
“Sounds like something Crosswhite would do,” Pope remarked.
“That’s what I thought, but I described him, and they say no. This guy had light-brown hair and light-colored eyes.”
“You just described half the men in America.”
Fields chuckled. “You should see these two clowns. Whoever it was really worked them over. One has a busted nose; the other’s jaw is wired shut.”
“Has Mariana made contact with Jessup?”
Fields was startled. Goddamn that Midori! But he recovered quickly enough. “I don’t know yet. I’m expecting first contact tonight.”
“I don’t want anything happening to her,” Pope said. “She has a great deal of potential.”
Which is exactly why she has to go, Fields thought to himself. “That’s understood. You have no idea who this new player might be?”
“No. He must be working for Ortega. You still have no intel on who took his wife and kids?”
“Nothing factual, but it almost has to be Serrano. Or maybe that Federale captain—Espinosa, I think his name is—the crooked cop who turned Vaught over to Ruvalcaba’s people.”
“What about the leak at the PFM?”
Fields was not accustomed to Pope asking so many pointed questions. It meant that he was beginning to lose confidence. “I don’t know where that stands.”
“Three of their deep-cover agents have turned up dead,” Pope said. “You weren’t supposed to give them anyone but Mendoza.”
“I felt we needed to increase our odds.”
“How many names did you give him?”
“All of them.”
There was a short pause at the other end of the line. “I realize you have a tough job down there, Clem, and I realize you’re working with the junior varsity, but you have to do better.”
Coming from Pope, “you have to do better” was tantamount to an ass chewing. “I understand,” Fields said. “Do you have anyone you can send me?”