Border War

by Lou Dobbs

  “The usual, I guess. I was a secretary and, well, you know what he did for a living. But my parents were never crazy about him.”

  “I bet.” Cash didn’t mean to sound so harsh and was afraid she might react, feeling the need to defend her dead husband. Looking back on it, Cash hadn’t felt any remorse when he’d used his .45 to shoot Vinnie as he crawled out of the Rio Grande River and across the nominal border marker Mexico had placed near Juárez. The plan had been for the cops to kill him on the U.S. side of the border. Then Carol wouldn’t feel any need to fulfill Vinnie’s threat to use the information if someone from the company hurt him. But there was no way Cash could let the loudmouth walk away from the border crossing. His orders were clear, and he had no problem pulling the trigger. Frankly, the chaos and questions the two dead men on the Mexican side of the border had raised had been a blessing in disguise. His sources said cops weren’t watching the border as closely and not nearly as many people were trying to cross.

  Cash tried to cover his comment by immediately saying, “He never should’ve brought you in on his plan to blackmail the company.”

  “Vinnie said to use the computer information if they killed him. I’m still not sure what I intend to do.” She scooted away from him on the couch so she could look him in the eye. “Is that why you’re here, Joe?”

  On impulse he reached across and kissed her on the mouth. He felt her full, moist lips as her tongue probed his. She moved closer, wrapping her arms around his neck.

  After a few minutes, Carol broke the embrace and said, “Let’s move this to the bedroom.”

  As she led him down the hallway he looked into the spare bedroom and saw men’s clothes tossed on the bed, one sweat shirt with a Northwestern University logo and size twelve tennis shoes on the throw rug. “Whose are those?” he asked without thinking.

  Carol gave him a sly smile and said, “Jealous?” Before he could answer she said, “Relax, my brother comes by and stays with me sometimes.”

  Cash had only one thing on his mind. “But he’s not coming by now, is he?”

  “No, we’re good.” She led Cash away from the room into her bedroom, then turned and said to him, “You know, Joe, you’re like my knight in shining armor.”

  Cash embraced her again. He had never been anyone’s knight in shining armor before.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Eriksen enjoyed listening to Ted Dempsey as he explained his philosophy. He could see why the guy was a respected television host and also why he was a lightning rod for those on both the left and the right who would much prefer the American public not bother themselves with the big issues, the big decisions, but simply let the wealthy and powerful, liberal and conservative alike, exercise what they imagine is their right to decide fates and destinies. They had talked for so long the restaurant had started to fill up with the dinner crowd. People occasionally came over to the table for an autograph, and Dempsey was unfailingly polite and pleasant. As he wrote his name on the title page of his latest book for a man who had gone out to his car to retrieve it, Dempsey looked over to Tom and asked, “What about you, Tom? How’s a Harvard man end up in the FBI?”

  “Thought it was a good use of an economics degree. I wanted to make a difference.” He looked down, deciding not to finish his sentence and sound like a whiner. He’d screwed up and gotten transferred. No one to blame but himself.

  Dempsey looked at Lila and said, “Harvard College doesn’t issue business degrees. We have economics.”

  Lila laughed at his comment and said, “What about you? How did a Harvard guy like you get into broadcasting?”

  “At first, I have to admit I was drawn to the excitement, to the outright fun of chasing down stories, digging into all that was going on. Then I was fascinated by the interplay between money and power, the politics of it all and the global struggle to assure ideological and economic outcomes. And I get the chance to raise my voice once in a while in favor of a country I love and a people I really like, especially when somebody is screwing with both. Occasionally, I get my butt kicked, but sometimes I win. Being in the arena is a hoot.”

  Dempsey’s comments only made Eriksen think about his transfer from Washington, what he was working for, his desire to work terror cases, and something he didn’t say very often, even to himself: his desire to serve his country.

  Dempsey said, “Everyone has a job to do, so do it well and wisely.” Eriksen watched as the older man gave Lila a knowing wink.

  * * *

  Luis Martinez’s hand shook violently as he held the cell phone. Manny had told him that if Enrique didn’t answer the phone, Martinez would lose a finger. He had ten chances to reach the computer geek by phone; then his usefulness was over. The little, almost empty room where he sat in a folding metal chair was at the end of the rat maze of hallways. The room was decorated the same way, with one bare bulb and little ventilation. The stench from the hallway had told Martinez that blood had been spilled in this room. Lots of it. The dark stains on the concrete floor weren’t from spilled coffee.

  When he was a young man, going through medical school and his residency in Mexico City’s second-largest hospital, he’d thought the hardest part of his life was already over. Despite everything he’d learned in medical school and saw at the hospital, nothing had prepared him to deal with this sort of pressure. He had a new wave of guilt for all the times he had treated Pablo Piña’s torture victims so that they could return to the torture room for another chance to reveal their information. He used to tell himself that no matter what he did, these people would suffer. Now he only hoped God would forgive him.

  Luis Martinez didn’t like setting up a friend. That was why he had some alternate ideas. All he needed was a few minutes alone with the cell phone. Manny had already ordered Martinez to arrange a meeting with Enrique at the marketplace where they had met before. The trendy tourist attraction had plenty of cafés and stalls where Manny could hide.

  His immediate concern, as he heard Enrique’s phone ring, was his ability to retain all ten fingers.

  Manny looked on placidly. Martinez cringed when Enrique’s mail message came on. His heart sank as he left a message hesitantly. “Please call me, Enrique. It’s very important.” His eyes flicked to Manny, who showed no emotion. At that moment Martinez thought the whole thing might have been a bluff.

  Then Manny gave a curt nod to a wiry young man with bad acne. The young man stepped up without hesitation, a folding knife already in his hand. He flicked it open with a quick twist of his wrist, snatched Martinez’s left hand, and jerked it up in front of his face.

  Martinez felt ill but couldn’t keep his eyes off the well-used knife. He cried out, “I can try again. Please don’t do this.”

  From the other side of the small room Manny said, “You can try again in an hour.” Martinez felt his entire body sag with relief.

  Then Manny said, “You can dial with nine fingers.” Martinez tried not to scream. But he failed.

  * * *

  Tom Eriksen sat across from Kat Gleason, holding a turkey-on-whole-wheat sub, in a quiet family-owned sandwich shop a few blocks away from the office. He tried to contain his excitement that she’d accepted his invitation to lunch, hoping to maintain some kind of cool-FBI-agent facade, but just looking across at her beautiful face made him grin like a lawyer suing a tobacco company.

  Kat had been telling him about how she had chosen Stanford. Along the way she explained that the tree most people thought was the school’s mascot was actually a member of the band. In fact, the school didn’t have a mascot. The nickname “the Stanford Cardinal” referred to the color, not the bird. It was a unique lack of tradition that confused pretty much everybody. But then she turned those blue eyes on him and said, “I really don’t know much about you. I get the idea you didn’t want to come out here from Washington. What made you move?”

  He hesitated because he hadn’t really talked about it with anyone in El Paso. Finally Eriksen said, “I had a choice to tran
sfer or risk being fired.”

  She gave him a sly smile and said, “I can’t wait to hear this story.”

  “Not a lot to tell. I had a pretty severe disagreement with the supervisor and may or may not have ended up assaulting him.”

  She gave him another smile and said, “You’re not sure if you assaulted him?”

  “For legal reasons, I’m never definitive about that point.”

  “You definitely have tweaked my curiosity, but I understand if you don’t want to tell me the whole story.”

  He thought about it for a moment, then shrugged and said, “No, I think you might be the first person in El Paso I wanted to tell. Make that the second person. John Houghton knew the story.”

  She quietly reached across the table and put her soft hand on his.

  Eriksen gathered his thoughts and said, “My squad in D.C. thought we were working a kidnapping, but it was, in fact, a human-smuggling case where the family didn’t have the money to pay for the teenage girl that had been brought up from the border. Regardless, we had to get the girl, who didn’t realize she was in any danger, and in the confusion one of the agents identified the wrong vehicle. My supervisor at the time jumped on the radio and told us to all follow that vehicle even after I came on the radio and said I had seen the girl with two grown men in a blue SUV headed the other direction. He told me to ignore it and fall in with the other surveillance.” Eriksen had to stop for a second to contain his anger as he recalled exactly what had happened.

  “I didn’t respond on the radio, but I ignored his order and followed the vehicle to a shopping center, where I called for help. The supervisor told me I was mistaken and that they were on the correct vehicle. The moron continued to insist I was wrong and broke off the surveillance he was on to come over to scream at me. He absolutely refused to even look for the SUV I had seen in the parking lot. When it started to pull out, my supervisor blocked me from getting back in my car, telling me I was an insubordinate son of a bitch. It was at this point I may or may not have punched him, then shoved him bodily across the hood of his own car so I could follow the blue SUV.”

  Kat sat still and speechless until she was finally able to say, “What happened to the girl?”

  “I was able to get a D.C. cop to help me stop the vehicle, and we rescued the girl. By that time my supervisor had already made a complaint about me, and the Bureau was faced with a dilemma. Do we fire a guy who just rescued a girl being essentially held for ransom, or do we brush it under the rug by transferring him out of the division? Faced with those choices, I decided I would love to see Texas.”

  Kat gave him a big smile and said, “Sounds like you’re a hero. I’ve often wondered what drives people to go so far above and beyond the call of duty.”

  “I thought I was just doing my duty, but our family has a chip on their shoulder and always tries to exceed people’s expectations.”

  “Why is that?”

  “My father says it goes back to the family’s arrival from Norway and the need to prove they could be an asset to their new country. He says it doesn’t matter if you’re an accountant or a congressman, you always have to do what’s right no matter what the consequence. In a way, being transferred out to El Paso is proof to my father that I was willing to live by the motto ‘do what’s right, not what’s easy.’”

  “You don’t think working in intelligence is the best use of your skills?”

  Eriksen shook his head. “I think everyone would be better served by letting me work cases that could affect the security of the country. It’s difficult to be free if you’re not safe.”

  * * *

  Manny stood perfectly straight in front of Pablo Piña, barely able to conceal his scorn. No matter what happened, he intended to end his employment with the so-called Dark Lord of the Desert, and when he crossed back after his assignment, Manny would decide if it was simply a resignation or something more permanent.

  Seated behind the enormous oak desk in his study, Piña said, “So Enrique finally answered the phone.”

  Manny nodded.

  “How many men will you take with you across the border?”

  “Just one.”

  “Don’t let the doctor leave the market either.”

  “We might have another problem, jefe.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A DEA agent was asking questions yesterday at a hotel in Juárez. Some of the federales were showing her photographs of the two coyotes killed the night Martinez tried to cross. She might know more about the whole situation.”

  “It was just an example of our American partners trying to screw us. They wanted both Enrique and Martinez under their control and never told me they were bringing them across. It’s ironic that I am now trying to save them any embarrassment by dealing with both these putos.”

  “There are a number of men who would be happy to deal with the DEA agent if she ever thought to come back across the border.”

  Manny could tell his boss was considering the offer. “Who was this DEA agent?”

  “Her first name is Lila, and she is supposed to be quite attractive, maybe thirty years old.”

  Now Piña perked up, his head snapping so he could look directly at Manny. “Leave her be. Make sure nothing happens to this DEA agent.” Then he seemed to take a breath and add, “It would draw too much attention.”

  Manny nodded and turned toward the door.

  Piña said, “Wait. Why don’t you take Hector with you. That way I know you have someone reliable to back you up.”

  “Hector took another job. It sounds like it is something he enjoys doing.”

  “What job would that giant madman enjoy?”

  “I think someone has paid him to assassinate Senator Ramos in Texas.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Tom Eriksen had never been on the set of a TV news show before, or any kind of show, for that matter. Glass partitions had been put up in the front courtyard of the Bank of America office building to enclose a set built up on a platform facing an audience area with simple wooden benches. More people could crowd in behind the benches if they didn’t mind standing. Ted Dempsey had explained that the set was going to be stored in El Paso so he could do a number of shows from the city in the coming months.

  A small army of technicians and workers had moved everything into place in just a couple of hours. High-intensity lights flooded the area, and security guards kept people from wandering behind the set, which consisted of two chairs facing each other and a second, smaller space that looked like it was used for news updates.

  The excitement of the crowds and the bustling crew as well as memories of his lunch with Kat Gleason had come together to put Eriksen in a good mood.

  He had been nervous accepting Ted Dempsey’s invitation to visit the set and watch the first live broadcast from El Paso. Mike Zara would have a stroke if he knew Eriksen was anywhere near Ted Dempsey, but Lila had convinced him it would be fun and said she wasn’t going to come by herself. In truth, he knew he needed a distraction from dwelling on John Houghton’s death. Next week, after the complete autopsy, they were meeting with the El Paso homicide detective, and then he might get some closure. That didn’t change the fact that one of the few people he could trust in El Paso was gone.

  Lila came up beside him and pointed out how distinct the two different groups of people in front of the set were. They didn’t look like protesters, but some carried signs. On one side of the set the signs had slogans like STOP OUTSOURCING or SENSIBLE IMMIGRATION. The other side of the crowd had more of an angry demeanor and signs that said such things as NAZIS WERE ANTI-IMMIGRATION TOO and RAMOS IS A TRAITOR.

  Lila said, “This is interesting. I didn’t realize his first guest was Elizabeth Ramos.”

  Eriksen turned from surveying the crowd and said, “The senator?”

  “The only senator who’s been making headlines for weeks. People either love her or hate her.”

  Eriksen started surveying the crowd as if he were on
a security detail: Every person was a potential assassin and every object a possible weapon. He found himself checking the number of security people and saw that the producers had hired El Paso police officers in addition to the private security force.

  Lila’s phone spit out the beat she used as one of her ringtones. She looked at the phone, then said to Eriksen, “This is one of my good sources in Mexico. I gotta take this.”

  * * *

  Eric Sidle felt a jolt of excitement seeing his friend alive and sitting at one of the picnic benches in the courtyard of the touristy marketplace. He’d been so certain Luis Martinez was dead, seeing him was a little bit of a shock. As he drew closer, Eric realized Martinez looked tired. No, much more than that. He was a shell of the man Eric had seen just over a week before. His left hand was heavily bandaged.

  Eric slid onto the bench across from him, and the first thing he said was, “What happened to you?” Then he noticed blood leaking out of the bandage and realized it looked like Martinez was missing his pinky finger.

  Martinez shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” He looked down and ran his hands across his face. “Concepción is dead.”

  Eric gave a little nod and said, “She was killed the same day as the father and daughter, wasn’t she?”

  Martinez just nodded.

  “Was it Piña?”

  Another nod, and then Martinez looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes. “I’m sorry, my friend.”

  “For what?” Eric turned his head to see Manny plop down next to him and another man ease onto the bench next to Martinez.

  Manny looked at him casually and said, “Hello, Enrique. You have something of ours.”

  * * *

  Lila Tellis pulled Tom Eriksen to the rear of the studio set, away from most of the noise, as she tried to explain a more abstract intelligence concept to the very practical, FBI-trained man. She tried to keep exasperation out of her tone, but she’d had this discussion too many times with cops and federal agents who wanted to see everything in black and white. Allegations were either founded or unfounded. People could either be found guilty or not guilty.