Breaking Point

by Dana Haynes

  Tommy, in chinos and an untucked cotton shirt, shook his head ruefully at the attire of Wildman, Susan, and Beth. “Any of y’all understand the concept of Saturday?”

  Del smiled. “I’ve heard the term.”

  “Swear t’God, if I said, ‘Hey, the Jets are playing,’ you’d wanna know if they landed safe.”

  “We were explaining,” Kiki interrupted, “that we don’t for a minute believe Susan is taking an actual vacation. I need to see photos, with Susan in them, mind you. Oh, and, Susan? I know how Photoshop works. Don’t even try.”

  Susan unbuttoned her form-fitting jacket as she sat. “It’s not Siberia. It’s the Italian Lake Region. You can reach me if you need me.”

  “We won’t,” Del said in his baritone Tennessee accent. A bear of a man, his years in the military and years as a chief pilot for the airlines left him with a gravitas. “Beth will be acting senior intergovernmental liaison for the four weeks you’ll be gone. She’s ready for it. Aren’t you?”

  “Sure.” Beth Mancini gave a little, self-deprecating shrug. She was always self-conscious around Susan. It was partly Susan’s I’m-in-charge demeanor. It was partly a wardrobe thing. Beth’s jacket and pants had looked perfectly fine in the mirror that morning, but as soon as Susan walked into the office, Beth found her own outfit frumpy.

  Susan waved away the conversation. “Beth isn’t the concern. I only worry about getting my job back from her. No, the problem, as always, is Dr. Tomzak.”

  “Bite me,” Tommy said without rancor.

  Susan ignored him, per usual. “Since the Oregon incident, the NTSB’s profile has never been higher. And Idiot-Boy here is a national hero.”

  Tommy snorted a laugh. “You’re meshuggener. I served in Kuwait. I know from real heroism. I didn’t do jack-shit in Oregon.”

  “And you can’t pull off Yiddish with a Texas twang. Look, we got great national coverage, but that was almost nine months ago. Budget hearings are starting up on the Hill. We’re out of the spotlight, and I don’t think that’s a good place to be right now. I want to do some more media. I want us to consider a nonfiction book. And I need Tommy.”

  “Get Isaiah,” Tommy said. “He actually stopped the bad guys.”

  “Isaiah’s as stubborn as you. Kiki, talk sense into this man!”

  Kiki held her cup to warm both hands. “Yes, because of the vast history of Tommy actually listening to me. That tactic always works.”

  She reached out and tousled his hair. Tommy shot her a cocked eyebrow and a lascivious wink. “You could always try coercing me.”

  Beth Mancini cleared her throat. “Here’s a thought.”

  The others turned to her. It had taken Beth years to get over her fear of public speaking. Her trick: she pretended to be Susan Tanaka.

  “Northwest Tech.”

  Tommy shrugged, lost.

  “It’s one of the big technology expos,” Kiki explained. “Thousands of geekazoids go each year. More to Beth’s point, so do a lot of technology-oriented media.”

  Beth immediately warmed to Kiki, whom she didn’t know well. “But it’s like Comicon for technology. Mainstream media covers it, as well. Imagine putting together a panel discussion: Dr. Tomzak—”

  “Tommy,” Tommy grunted.

  “Tommy,” Beth corrected, “ Isaiah Grey, and Kiki. You could talk about the technology that brought down CascadeAir 818. You could talk about the way the Go-Team untangled the mystery. No one person has to play the hero. It was a team effort. I have a friend on the executive committee this year. I called her. I can make this happen.”

  Tommy started to protest as Kiki beamed, “I’m in! So is Tommy.”

  “Whoa, honey! I’m in? Since when?”

  “You are.” Kiki patted his knee. “We’ll talk Isaiah in, too. Beth: good call!”

  Beth beamed.

  Del sat back, hands clutched over his solid middle. “See? I just shut the hell up and let you youngsters sort it out. That there’s leadership.”

  Susan reached across the maple table and squeezed the back of Beth’s hand. Then she smoothed her skirt and stood up. “Good. Now I’m on vacation.”

  3

  FOUR DAYS EARLIER—MEXICO

  The Wild Boar Brigade was ginned up for the Big Sell. Today was make-or-break time for the entire op.

  Two agents waited in a dilapidated GM pickup with an off-color trunk lid and left-rear quarter panel; a dead coyote carcass was bungeed to the dented hood. One more guy waited across the street, kneeling next to a ’74 Harley, a tool kit and a repair book open on the battered sidewalk. They had two guys inside the bar with La Chica—the bartender and a fifth agent knocking around balls on the tattered and madly canted pool table.

  La Chica sat at the bar in a very short denim skirt and cowboy boots and a flouncy blouse, unbuttoned low. She drank Cerveza Preparada and nibbled on peanuts. She looked like she could be Mexican. By the time she’d been there forty minutes, she had turned down four dour efforts at amorous communication ranging from you’re new here to how much, honey?

  As she neared her forty-fifth minute on the bar stool, the guy kneeling next to the Harley said, “Tango Tango Tango” into his collar mike. A six-week-old, cherry-red Cadillac Escalade glided up to the front of the bar, braced by twin steel-sided Humvees, dust rising in their wakes. All three drivers glared, alert to the streets of Juarez.

  Two hard guys in crisp jeans and snakeskin boots climbed out of the lead Hummer. Both wore sunglasses and Wrangler jackets long enough to hide holsters. They checked out the two agents in the GM pickup, who had a map of Texas unfolded on the dashboard and were arguing loudly in Spanish. The dead coyote on the hood was a nice bit of business. Who had ever heard of federales, regardless of which side of the border they hailed from, rolling with a carcass on the hood?

  J. T. Laney, head of ATF’s Joint Intelligence Task Force on Mexican Weapon Procurement, had thought up the thing with the coyote. He’d shot it, too. The night before the big sell, pissing drunk, they’d outfitted the carcass with Ray-Ban knockoffs, an ear jack, and a shield. They’d shot photos of it and dubbed it “Special Agent Wiley.”

  Now, the gun-hands from the Hummer dismissed the arguing cowboys as drunks and ignored them. Perfect.

  J. T. Laney, kneeling next to the Harley, said, “You got two bucks.”

  La Chica likely would get scanned for electronics, so she wore no communication gear; Laney’s words were for the agent behind the bar and the guy at the pool table.

  The rear door of the Escalade, with its smoked windows, remained closed.

  One of the agents in the GM pickup said, “Any day now, Carlos.”

  Which is when the X-factor rolled into town. In this case, the X-factor was represented by a brown-haired American in a rented Toyota pulled up next to the Escalade.

  A big man—six-two, midforties, and broad-shouldered—undid his seat belt and climbed out of the rental. He coughed dust and walked toward La Chica’s bar.

  One of the guys in the truck swore. “Who’s this Boy Scout? The fuck’s he doing?”

  J. T. Laney said, “Hold positions.” He was used to X-factors. Every field operation included surprises.

  The big man ignored the watchers on the street and opened the saloon door. At that exact moment, the right rear door of the Escalade opened and Carlos “the War Dog” Ramos stepped down. He wore a fifteen-hundred-dollar white suit and five-hundred-dollar Tom Ford sunglasses. Two more of his men left the Hummers, but not the drivers, who idled their rigs and glared at the dusty street.

  Carlos and his boys began strutting toward the bar.

  “Boss? The Boy Scout?”

  “No time,” J. T. hissed. The big American’s timing couldn’t have been worse. He was in the saloon and the War Dog was about to enter, so the die was cast.

  J. T. Laney stood next to the Harley and brushed off the knees of his beat-up jeans. The War Dog glanced across the street at him but J. T. wore his Jose Cuervo baseball cap low enough
to obscure his eyes. “No choice. We are green for go,” J. T. said, hardly moving his lips.

  La Chica could have been Mexican, but in fact she was half Israeli, half Palestinian. She glanced in the mirror and froze as Ray Calabrese from the Federal Bureau of Investigation walked into the bar. Ray moved directly to the bar, picked a stool five down from Daria Gibron, La Chica, and ordered a Bud. He turned to Daria with a polite smile across his rectangular face. “Buenos días, señora.”

  Ray turned away, reached for a bowl of shelled peanuts.

  Daria began swearing inside her head. Ray must have been staking out the saloon.

  Carlos Ramos and his soldiers appeared in the mirror behind the bar.

  The bartender grabbed a bottle of Gran Patron and set it near the cash register: the signal to Daria that the big sell was a go.

  She crossed her shapely legs and turned slightly on her bar stool.

  Carlos the War Dog walked straight to her. He took a seat next to Daria, four seats from the big American, eating peanuts and minding his business. Daria smiled languidly at the drug kingpin and sipped her spiced drink. She wore her black hair very short and spiky, shaved close at the back of her neck.

  Carlos said, “Tonic water.”

  The agent poured him one over ice with a lime wedge.

  Two of the four guards took tables at the left-front and the left-rear side of the bar, flanking the room. A third took the last stool at the bar, to the right of Ray Calabrese, and spun the stool so he faced the room at large. The bar was laid out in a reverse L shape; Daria, Carlos, Ray Calabrese, and the guard sat on the long side. The fourth guard took a stool on the short end of the L, to the right of the bartender.

  The guards’ positions had the flair of a well-executed military maneuver. All angles and exits were covered, and the few other patrons were all in sight.

  Daria had no choice but to play out the scene. She leaned toward the dapper man in the spotless white suit. “Did you like the samples?”

  He nodded, eyes on the mirror behind the bar and thus on everything that happened behind him. He glanced at the man smacking pool balls on a table that badly needed adjustment.

  “The weapons were splendid. But there’s a problem.”

  Daria tensed up without showing it to anyone. It was a trick she’d learned in the Israeli army and intelligence services.

  “Tsk. I am not a woman who does problem well.”

  “Alas.” He shrugged within the spotless white suit. “We have an infestation problem.”

  “Infes—”

  “Federales,” Carlos the War Dog said, smiling.

  * * *

  The ATF agent behind the bar had excellent hearing and an even better poker face. He fiddled with the cash register. He put his weight on his left boot, which rested on the innards of an electric guitar foot pedal the Wild Boar Brigade had turned into a silent alarm. He stepped on it twice.

  * * *

  The power pedal created a specific tone of interference in the ear jacks of the ATF team. Two hisses of static, one second in duration, meant Trouble.

  Carlos sipped his tonic water. “Do you know how to spot federal agents, señorita?”

  “Yes. I have been in this business awhile.”

  But Carlos wasn’t interested in her response. He nodded to his right, toward Ray Calabrese with his beer and growing pile of peanut shells half filling the plastic bowl before him. “This fellow, for instance?”

  Daria reached languidly to her left boot and slid a palm-size folding knife into her hand. She pretended to look past Carlos at Ray, who minded his own business.

  “Is he an agent?” Carlos asked.

  A flick of her short thumbnail, and the wide, two-inch-long blade whispered out of its hinged sheath.

  “Most certainly not,” Carlos answered his own question. “The hair, the clothes … He looks like a cop. Thus, he is not a cop. But the bastard pretending to play pool…?”

  The agent at the pool table had been staring at the back of the War Dog’s head. His eyes flickered to the bar mirror and he realized the drug dealer was staring right back.

  Carlos turned in his seat and motioned to the ATF agent by the pool table. “Excuse me. Señor?” He made a come here gesture. His four soldiers braced.

  The agent’s eyes flickered nervously. “Um … Sorry, man. Just playing pool.”

  Carlos switched to English. “Come here.”

  Daria glanced behind Carlo’s head. Ray’s eyes were on the dwindling pile of peanuts.

  The stunned agent at the pool table shrugged. He looked far too sweaty to carry off just playing pool.

  Carlos smiled languidly. “Trujillo.”

  The man at the left-front table stood and drew a Colt Python.

  The bartender stepped hard on the foot pedal. Trouble.

  Daria slid off her stool, drawing Carlos’s attention back her way. He turned to her, brows rising in question.

  Daria’s left arm was a blur. Seemingly out of nowhere, she produced a short, fat knife. She slashed out, her arm arcing horizontal. The guard sitting on the short end of the L flinched away, wondering why she’d almost slapped him. He went for his gun. But his brain began to register a problem. He hadn’t yet realized his neck had been sliced open from windpipe to spine.

  Ray Calabrese hadn’t appeared to be paying attention, but as soon as Daria stood, he brought his right arm up and smashed his bent elbow into the temple of the guard nearest him. The man’s eyes rolled up and he fell as if boneless, flopping to the floor.

  Daria stepped close to the War Dog. In swift, coordinated moves, she had one hand in his hair, and with the other she shoved the short, fat knife against the drug lord’s throat. The blade was still clean because her arcing attack to the first guard had been far faster than his blood spatter.

  “¡Nadie se mueva!” she barked.

  The last two guards froze.

  The ATF agent with the pool cue did likewise.

  Ray hadn’t entered with a weapon—the professionals would have spotted it. Instead, he decided to borrow a SIG-Sauer from the guard he’d clocked. As Ray started to draw it, the guard sitting at the far-left table gambled. He shoved away from his table, fist coming up, long steel barrel clearing his holster. The man climbed to his feet but cried out and dropped like a guillotine as Ray shot him through the thigh.

  Everyone in the saloon flinched at the boom of the SIG.

  The bartender reached for a sawed-off shotgun under the cash register. Daria’s back was to him, eyes on the last guard with the Python, but she heard him move.

  “Bartender’s good,” she said in English.

  Ray said, “Okay.”

  He lined up his borrowed gun on the last guard. The man hadn’t aimed the Python yet, but he hadn’t set it down, either. His eyes flickered from his boss’s throat to Ray and back again.

  J. T. Laney burst into the saloon, the two agents from the pickup behind him. The ATF agents stepped between Ray and the standing guard.

  “Freeze! Nobody move! No—”

  No longer in Ray’s line of fire, the guard stepped forward and tucked the Python under J. T.’s jaw.

  The agents from the pickup aimed at the guard, shouting “Down! Put it down!” almost drowning one another out. The guard pointed his weapon at their boss; the agents pointed their weapons at him. He made no move to obey their shouts.

  The first guard lay on the floor, hands around his throat, gagging on his own blood. The second had crumpled to the fetal position under his stool. The third held his thigh, keening in misery. The men on the ground were the only ones moving.

  “I have committed no crime here,” Carlos the War Dog said loudly and in English, feeling the battle knife against his throat. “We were attacked. Shall we call the local police, ask them to clear up this misunderstanding?”

  A beat, and the bartending agent said, “Boss?”

  J. T. licked his suddenly bone-dry lips. “Carlos? I keep your men. Especially the fucker who dr
ew on me. You walk.”

  The guard increased the pressure of the barrel against J. T.’s jaw.

  Still, nobody moved but the wounded.

  “Daria…?” J. T. let his eyes travel to hers without moving his head.

  A beat, and she released her hold on Carlos. He took two steps away from her, turned, eyes burning with rage. He made fists but felt, more than heard, Ray step to his back.

  Carlos looked around at the three downed men. He turned back to Daria, then to J. T. “Deal.”

  The last guard let his Python swing on the fulcrum of his trigger finger, the handle falling, barrel rising to the ceiling. One of the agents from the pickup took it from him.

  Carlos the War Dog Ramos adjusted his white suit, his open shirt collar. He nodded once to Daria—“Señora?”—and turned to the saloon door.

  4

  THE EXPEDITIONARY UNIT OF the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives made three arrests in the small Mexican town and contacted its indigenous counteragency to handle the legal details. Three high-level soldiers of the Ramos cartel would be held at the nearest Mexican Army garrison: one man concussed, one leg wound, one uninjured. A fourth drug-runner bled to death on the scene.

  The true objective of the sting operation, Carlos the War Dog Ramos, walked away.

  In the dusty street outside the saloon, locals emerged from hiding—some underground telegraph alerting them the gun fighting was over. At least for now.

  J. T. Laney spoke on his cell phone with the unit’s headquarters in Tucson. He paced, his men and Ray Calabrese watching him, the men darting acid glances at the FBI agent who had donned sunglasses and leaned against the ATF pickup. After a mumbled conversation, J. T. hung up and turned to the FBI agent.

  “You screwed the pooch, you dumb son of a bitch! We worked this case—”

  He was cut off as Daria Gibron emerged fast from the saloon, stepped into the throng of federal agents, and stepped up to the young agent who had pretended to play pool.

  “That was amateur!” she spit. “You could have gotten me killed!”

  The young agent gave her a cocky grin. “Don’t get your panties knotted, babe. You weren’t—”