by David Nees
“What is it?” Dan asked.
There was silence for a moment. “Just…just be careful…and get back here safely.”
“Is that your professional advice?”
There was a pause in conversation. “More personal. Just be careful.” With that Jane ended the call.
It was 10 pm when he heard the sound of a single engine plane. There was only one reason for such a plane to be flying in this area. They were looking for him. It was night, so Dan guessed they had thermal imaging goggles. He headed for the nearest rocks, two large boulders. He took off his backpack and pulled out his reflective blanket. He squeezed himself and the pack into the crack between the rocks and then pulled the blanket over him. It would reflect his body heat back to him. It was a survival tool; it kept his body heat from escaping and therefore being seen by thermal imaging. It was about ninety percent effective and Dan hoped the rocks would hide the ten percent that escaped. The rocks gave off heat for many hours through the night.
He lay still, almost holding his breath as the plane made multiple passes. After each pass, Dan peeked out to spot its location from the running lights. The aircraft was working its way north. Great. I’ll just follow it. In two days he would be at the road and his pickup. They’ll never find me or the gear. I’ll leave them a mystery they’ll never solve. He stuffed the blanket back into the top of his pack and headed off again. His left foot hurt and he limped, but the pack was now lighter with his diminished supplies and he felt less burdened. A successful mission buoyed his spirits as well.
After Dan hung up, Jane sat back in thought at her desk. What the hell did he mean about a bonus on this delivery? Dan must have included some other drug lords into his targeting and had been effective at eliminating them. She couldn’t stop a grin from spreading across her face. She had picked Dan because he was so good at what he did. Killing and disrupting the Brooklyn mob. He had acted on his own, using his own resources. The training he had received had only made him better, more lethal. She thought back about how Dan had shaken up the training staff at the Farm. He broke the rules. He didn’t play into their mind games. It was what she wanted from an assassin that was going to have to operate alone without much support. Now it seemed he was showing those traits in the field. Some people may not like this. She picked up her phone.
“Henry, can we talk privately?”
The next morning they walked along the towpath on the Chesapeake and Ohio, or C&O canal bordering the Potomac River. The idea of the canal had been promoted by George Washington but construction hadn’t started until 1828. It was one hundred eighty-five miles long and used to bring the wealth of the interior, coal, lumber, and farm goods out to the east coast markets. The river was not navigable above Washington, DC as it climbed from the tidal plain into the piedmont. The canal had been in operation for over one hundred years. Now it was a long, narrow national park enjoyed by millions of hikers, joggers and bicycle travelers.
Jane and Henry both eyed the passing traffic, pausing in their conversation as people went by. Occasionally either Henry or Jane would stop to look at something and glance over their shoulder to see if anyone was following. They both had the ability to memorize the clothing of people around them and would spot anyone spending too much time in their wake.
“So you think Dan took out more than Mendoza?”
“I’m sure of it.” Jane had arranged to talk with Henry that same afternoon after receiving Dan’s call.
“No reports yet?”
Jane shook her head. “The cartels will try to keep this under wraps for as long as possible. It may take a few days for the news to get out.”
“The embassy may be shook up. They don’t like anything to disturb the status quo. You think the job went down cleanly?”
“No way to tell, but Dan sounded fine when he called. My guess is that no one on the receiving end knows who did this…or how many were involved. They’ll be looking at each other pretty hard.”
Henry smiled. “That’s a good thing.”
“If war breaks out among them, there will be lots of bodies. That always makes the Mexican government look bad. It could destabilize the president.”
“You mean the president who has cabinet members on the take from the cartels?”
“He may be the best of the options for the Mexican people.”
“The government, especially the Policía Federal, will let them kill one another so long as it doesn’t involve too much civilian collateral.”
“It always does, though…in the end.”
Henry shrugged as if to say, what can you do? “No one will connect this to the U.S.”
“Except for the exfiltration. That’s the weak link. Dan called it right away. He has a good sense for those things.”
“Someone from the embassy sent to pick up this stranger and take him to the airport in Hermosillo.” Henry looked around again, surveying the passing foot traffic. “No one will know who he is or why he’s being picked up.”
“But they will know he’s coming from an area that could be connected to the assassinations. And Dan will have weapons on him.”
“If the issue gets too intense, we can always claim we had an asset in place to spy on this meeting. When the attack happened we pulled him out.”
Jane looked over at her boss. She admired Henry. He was old enough to be her father; and wise enough to qualify for the position. And she liked that he still had the fight in him, after all the years he’d spent in the agency. “You think anyone will believe us?”
Henry smiled. “It doesn’t matter. They’ll be no trail to follow any further. All they’ll be left with are suspicions. Meanwhile the job will be done, with the effects we want happening.” He turned to Jane, now with a serious look on his face. “Get him out cleanly. Don’t let there be any contact with others. He’s a ghost now and he needs to disappear from Mexico. He went in, he did the job; now let’s get him out and all the suspicions in the world won’t add up to a damn.”
They turned to go back to their cars, both going to work where Jane sat in her office to wait for word on Dan’s extraction.
Chapter 12
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D an walked through the night. While he relished the cold, dry air, his left ankle grew ever more painful and his limp increased. Tomorrow was going to be a long, hot day if he was going to keep moving. His instinct was that he had to put miles between him and the shooting site. There was safety in the miles. Three more times the planes came over. The last time, Dan barely made it to some rocks to gain cover. When day came it would be more difficult to continue. He would have to keep close to cover. To be caught out in the open, on the flat pan of the desert would be disastrous. The pans were areas of just sand and small rocks with no brush or trees for cover. A sharpshooter could take him down from a small plane and with nowhere to hide his only defense would be to try to take down the plane. That would only escalate the dangers and ruin his chance of a clandestine escape.
He stopped and took off his backpack. Pulling out a bottle of water, Dan took a long drink. He breathed deeply the cool night air. There were few smells in the desert, especially when the heat of the day burned off any odors. This was not like the eastern woods, which were rich in odor of things growing and decaying. Out here things dried out. Still the night brought subtle scents of cactus along with the alkali smell of the sand and dirt.
Dan’s ankle throbbed fiercely. He looked to the east. The black of the night was turning to blue as the sun crept towards the horizon. He would go another two hours and then he had to stop and elevate his ankle. He had some anti-inflammatory pills he could take. Hopefully with those and a few hours of keeping the ankle raised, he would be ready for more hours of hiking. He put the water bottle away, shouldered his pack, and, with a sigh, limped off to the north.
Tariq was fuming. This man, Hector, was now acting like they were prisoners. He could see the armed men standing around the compound. When he had approached, they indicated he co
uld not leave. Most acted like they didn’t understand English. The one who would speak to him just said that there was a problem and they had to stay inside the compound. They could not be seen. Something was clearly wrong, but Tariq could not find Hector to learn what it was.
Meanwhile Hector had received a phone call from an informant in the U.S. embassy. The man spoke of a plan to pick someone up on a dirt road that ran north of the mesa. He found a map and saw a dirt road running east and west north of the mesa on it. It went nowhere. Could this be the pickup point? Could this have been the way shooters got to the rim? The road was probably two days hike away from the south rim. Who would set up something like that? He didn’t have answers but he didn’t have much else to go on. Hector met with some of his men in town.
“Four of you go north on this road,” he pointed to a dirt road that ran into the desert. “Here at this crossroad, you go west. You see the road dead ends? You follow it to the end. The shooters may have used it to get close to the hacienda. They could shoot from the mesa rim. If they had gone south or east after the shooting we would have seen them, so I’m guessing they went north.” He looked at the men. “They may be meeting someone to get them out of the area. Take automatic weapons. These are dangerous men.”
He pointed to the crossroads. “There is a gas station and little store here. Stop and ask if anyone has seen strangers come through the area. Make sure they contact you if they see anything.”
He gave them the map. “Call me when you get there and after you’ve driven the road. Someone or some group shot Jorge and we have to find them. Bring them back alive if you can. I want to find out who sent them and then we have to kill them in a manner that no one will forget.”
The thought had occurred to Hector that it could have been a clandestine police or army operation. If so, it required an even stronger response to let those know they must not get out of line. His contacts in the government were going to hear from him next.
Dan stopped just as the sun broke over the rim of the horizon. The problem during the day would not be his heat signature, but being visually hidden. He was in an area of small trees and bushes. Cutting a few bushes and placing them together so they looked natural seemed to be a good way to stay under cover. Hiding under rocky overhangs would work, when there were some nearby. His greatest danger was still going to be the open pans that he had to cross to get to the rendezvous point. For now, he found some large rocks and nestled himself in between them. He stretched his camouflage netting overhead and hoped for the best. He didn’t dare unlace his boot for fear of not getting it back on. Instead he propped it up and took four anti-inflammatory pills and lay back to rest.
If his ankle held up, he would be at the pickup point by mid-day tomorrow. That was if he could walk through the night. His thoughts returned to Rita and the life they had lost. A wave of grief followed by anger came over him. Not only had he lost his family, but Rita’s parents blamed Dan for their daughter’s death. Dan had no family of his own outside of his sister in Montana, and now his in-laws had rejected him.
His plans for revenge had inexorably led him to this point. Jane may have saved him by pulling him away from the grasp of the FBI or the mob, but that act had not resulted in much of a life for him. He snorted in derision at his own follies. He had dealt his payback, but that path had led to him lying here in the Mexican desert with a bum ankle hiding out from spotter planes. He was hot; his clothes were dusty and dirty. He hadn’t washed in almost a week. His face was caked with dried dust; his hair thick with it. Quite a sight, he thought. Quite a life.
“Rita, Rita,” he said. “I sure do miss you. Can you forgive me?”
In his mind came the words, “Forgive you for what? We make our bed and we lie in it.”
He opened his eyes. Did I just hear that or is my mind is playing tricks on me? It must be the heat.
He looked out over the desert. Nothing moved. The day was growing hotter. Then his eye caught sight of the bird. It was large and black. Was it the bird he’d seen days before? The ruffed feathers at its throat confirmed it was a raven. It had a strong black beak. It was perched on the limb of a dead tree, five feet off of the ground and about fifty feet away from where Dan lay. The bird sat there looking directly at him, its head cocked to one side, a dark eye staring straight at him.
Is that bird looking at me? Dan wondered. He called out, “I’m not dead, just resting. No food here for you.” The bird watched him without moving on the branch. Dan wondered whether or not the bird would come over and peck him if he went to sleep. “I’m just going to rest my eyes. You stay where you are. Deal?”
Am I getting heat stroke? Talking to a bird? The thought crossed his mind. The raven seemed to nod its head. As Dan was thinking about that gesture that seemed to be more than random, the bird called out. It sounded like “agua” but it was not clear. The bird made the sound twice again.
Is my mind playing tricks on me? What the hell? Dan thought. The desert might be getting to him but he had time to pass. He took out a water bottle; one almost finished. He cut away the bottle and left a cup-like bottom with a couple of swallows of water in it. Placing it carefully on the ground, he took the butt end of his carbine and gently pushed the cup towards the raven. The bird watched him and when he had pulled the rifle back, it leapt off the branch and dropped to the ground. It walked to the cup, its head bobbing in time with its feet. The bird kept an eye on Dan. When it got to the cup, it grabbed it in one claw and backed it up a few paces. Then the bird dipped its head to the water and drank. When it was done it squawked, this time with no intelligible words and launched into the air. It circled Dan and then headed off north across the desert.
Dan sat there in silence, wondering at what had just taken place. He had a raven, a scavenger, which seemed to be following him…for days. It seemed to answer the questions he posed to it. And then the bird sounded to Dan like it asked for water. It approached him to take a drink from the cup that was offered and flew off. My imagination is getting too overactive; that’s not good for a sniper and assassin.
Chapter 13
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H ector had his hands full. He put in a harsh call to a mid-level Deputy Minister of Justice, reminding him that Hector expected his cooperation and if he found anything to implicate his department in what happened it would not be healthy for him or his family. A commander in the Policía Federal also received a similar call. From both men he got nervous assurances that their departments had nothing to do with the killings. Hector guessed that they would be looking closely into their departments, terrified that someone may be connected to what happened. Next he concentrated on the other drug gangs.
The three cartels whose leaders were alive were holding back for now. Los Zetos and Tijuana, cartels whose leaders had been killed, had already started attacking some of his Sinaloa members. Hector was frantic to get to whoever was controlling them. His problem was no one was certain who would emerge with control. Right now various elements were acting without control from the top. He expected more to come including raids on his drug warehouses and processing plants.
The planes had not located any sign of men hiking through the desert. Hector told them to keep flying; the shooters had to be out there somewhere. He had men climb up the escarpment to the mesa ridge. Careful exploring uncovered some evidence of human activity, footprints, tamped down dirt, but it was very slight and there were no shell casings to be found anywhere. The distance was so far as to make the site suspect to Hector, but he had nothing else to go on. He realized he was holding out more and more hope for the men checking out the dirt road. But if that was the exit route why had the planes found no evidence of movement in the desert? Nothing added up.
By the second day the papers had the story. It was splashed all across the country; “Drug Lords Shot in Ambush!” “Cartel Leaders Gunned Down; By Whom?” “Major Cartel Summit Ends in Death!” Chihuahua was swarming with reporters and investigators si
nce it was the nearest population center to the hacienda. The Policía Federal had taken over the hacienda. They interrogated all the staff that they could round up. Hector talked to the investigators and characterized the meeting as an attempt to bring peace to the cartels in order to stop the killing. He did his best to portray Jorge as a reformer who wanted to do good for his country.
Mexico had always had a soft spot for Robin Hood characters, outlaws who help the poor. It was a nice meme but mostly false. Hector now played upon that mystique to paint Jorge, and himself, in a sympathetic light. Some in the press lapped it up; a few were skeptical, as always. María found herself subject to similar assaults by the press, but by staying inside the family compound, a fortress mansion, in Mexico City, she was able to keep away from the intrusions of the reporters; they could only try to reach her by phone.
Dan set out later that same day. The planes had stopped for some time, probably to go back to refuel in Chihuahua City. He limped along as fast as he could go and when he heard the faint sound of an engine, he headed directly for cover. The planes made two passes while he hid. Then the night came. The hiking was easier in the chill air and his thermal blanket gave him protection from being spotted by thermal imaging. By early the next morning he was closing in on the dirt road.
While he was an hour out, he marked the spot in his GPS where he would meet the driver and then made the call to the number programmed into the satellite phone.
“Hola,” someone said when they answered the call.
“I’m a half hour out from pickup.” He proceeded to give him the coordinates out to the fourth decimal minute. He was asked to repeat the numbers.
“Sí, sí. Yes, we’ll meet you there. Half hour.”
Dan started walking. That was a Mexican. Why would the embassy send a Mexican to pick me up? Dan’s sense of danger was triggered. Maybe locals are a good idea. They won’t draw attention to themselves…or me. He argued with himself, but his concern would not go away.