by Tom Clancy
As the car mounted the hill, Moore sprang up and fired another pair of rounds, the first punching the rear window and striking the passenger’s head, the second going wide as the driver cut the wheel hard, out of Moore’s bead.
Miguel and Sonia ducked into an alcove and once more vanished.
The remaining guy on foot steered himself into the same alcove as the car pulled to a stop.
Bad move, guys, Moore thought, because the kid and his girl were going into a three-story hotel, and they would probably be trapped inside.
Miguel kept cursing and trying to keep up with Sonia, who rushed past the hotel’s front desk, where the elderly woman working there gaped at them. They left her calling after them and bounded into the stairwell.
“Where are we going?” he cried.
“Just keep going!”
Where had she found this bravery? He was supposed to be the man and protect her, but she’d spotted Corrales being abducted, had seen the approach of two other men, and had kicked off her heels and gotten them out of there before these idiots could kidnap them. But now there was still at least one bastard on their tail (who knew what happened to the other one), yet Sonia seemed to have a plan.
“We can’t go to the roof,” he shouted back. “We’ll get stuck up there!”
“We’re not going to the roof,” she said, arriving on the next landing. She opened the door to the second floor, waved him on. Then they waited there, just panting, taking in the stale air as they listened for the footsteps of the guy chasing them. He arrived on the landing but kept on going up to the third floor.
Miguel breathed the deepest sigh of relief of his life. He glanced over at Sonia, still struggling for breath. He looked down, and in her hand was a small knife whose blade curved into a hook.
“Where’d you get that?”
“From my purse. My father gave it to me. It’s really just a good-luck charm, but my father taught me how to use it.”
“Fernando is very strict about us having weapons.”
“I know. I didn’t want to tell you, but he let me keep it. I have to protect myself.”
Miguel frowned—
Just as the door swung open.
“Don’t move,” said the guy who’d been chasing them, his gun leveled on Miguel. “All you have to do is come along. There’s a car outside.”
Miguel thought he was dreaming as Sonia screamed, reared back, and slashed open the guy’s throat, the blood coming in a great fountain across the wall.
“Get his gun!” she hollered.
He stood there, stunned. Who was this girl he’d fallen in love with? She was remarkable.
With his phone vibrating and yet another car arriving outside the hotel and at least three more guys rushing inside, Moore figured that if he walked in there, he’d be either captured or just shot for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He crouched low behind a car and tugged out the phone: Fitzpatrick’s number had come up while he’d just missed a call from Towers. He answered Fitzpatrick’s call. “Where are you? We still can’t find the other two guys, and no sign of Corrales.”
“Damn, we need to find them,” Moore said. “But yeah, I’m near this hotel a couple of blocks down. The road is real steep. The kid and the girl are inside, but these other guys are coming in to grab them.”
“Who the fuck are they?”
“Don’t know yet. But sure as shit we’ll find out. Get the car and meet me over here!”
“Dude, how the hell did this go south so fast?”
“I don’t know. Just get here.”
That they’d come up from behind him and had managed to drag him into the building was very disappointing to Corrales. He’d prided himself on being very in tune with his senses, with his environment, always aware of any danger, reaching out with an extrasensory perception, as though he could read the thoughts of his actors before they drew close, feel their body heat from meters away, and know ahead of time what dark intentions lay in their hearts.
But that was bullshit, and he’d fucked up—because he’d let his guard down and forgotten that in this business there were people who wanted to kill you every day.
So these light-footed bastards had managed to drag him into the shop, which had turned out to be an old clothing store under heavy renovation, with construction materials all around them.
While they’d managed to disarm Corrales, they hadn’t been able to get a firm grip on him, and he slithered like a snake out of the first guy’s grip, turned, and took a round point-blank in his shoulder before ripping his gun back from the guy who’d seized it.
Before either of the guys could react, Corrales put a bullet in each of their hearts.
And then he fell onto the floor, gasping, the blood pouring from his shoulder. He cursed and cursed again. He’d been shot before, but only minor flesh wounds, nothing like this.
He fumbled for his cell phone, dialed Miguel, waited. No answer. He called Pablo. Nothing. He sat there, bleeding. He called Raúl. Voice mail. Police sirens rose in the distance, and out behind the dust-caked windows of the shop, the tourists turned their heads as a police car rumbled past them.
Those bastards would no doubt capture Miguel and Sonia. How would he explain this to his boss, Castillo? That one-eyed fool would be outraged, and Corrales’s failure would result in his execution unless he was able to link back up with the boss’s son and the girl.
Castillo would ask, “Why did the Guatemalans attack you? I told you to hire them and have them make some hits on the Sinaloas.”
But Corrales would be unable to answer. He could not tell Castillo that the money he’d been given to pay off the Guatemalans and use them as assassins had actually been used to help finance Corrales’s hotel restoration and that he’d lied to the Guatemalans about payment. He’d given them twenty percent down, they had completed a half-dozen killings, but then Corrales had screwed them out of their money. They were, to put it delicately, fucking pissed. They’d killed Johnny and had followed Corrales here. He hadn’t realized how relentless the little fuckers were, and now everything was falling apart.
Damn, he needed to get to a hospital.
Miguel clutched the pistol and shook his head in disbelief at Sonia. Her arm was covered in blood, but she was unfazed by that. Their would-be kidnapper lay on the ground with a geyser still erupting from his neck.
She wrenched open the door, but the sound of men running up the stairs sent them back inside, down the hallway.
“This way!” she cried.
They hung a sharp left and found another stairwell. This time he tugged open the door.
Others were charging upward.
“How many are there?” he asked, dumbfounded.
“Too many,” she answered.
“They’re going to trap us,” he said.
She bit her lip, turned back, then went running toward the nearest hotel-room door and gave it a sharp kick with the bottom of her bare foot. She cursed in pain. The door did not give.
“Get back,” he cried, then fired two rounds into the doorjamb, shattering some of the wood. He wrenched the door back and kicked it open. They hustled inside.
The tiny room reeked of cleaning products, the bed perfectly made. No suitcase. Empty room. Good.
“They’ll see the door,” she said, rushing to the window.
“Sonia, you’re amazing. You’re not hysterical.”
“I am. I’m just hiding it,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “Come on, we have to get out.”
“You killed a guy back there,” he said.
“Oh my God, I know.” She tugged back the long curtains, threw open the window’s latch, then slit open the screen with her knife. They looked down into the alley below, about a five-meter drop.
“Tie the sheets!” she shouted. “Come on! Tie the sheets.”
“We’re not going out that way,” he said. “I have a gun, come on.”
“Forget it. There’s too many of them. We have to keep moving,�
�� she said.
He shook his head.
And just as she rushed toward the bed to tug away the bedspread, the door burst open.
Miguel fired at the first guy who entered, striking him in the stomach, but the second guy moved in very fast and held his pistol on Sonia. “Shoot again, señor. And she dies.”
The gunfire coming from within the hotel, and the police sirens from not one, not two, but at least three units, drove Moore farther back from the hotel and toward the corner, where he huddled behind an old Volkswagen Beetle and returned the cell-phone call to Towers.
After Moore had given the man a ten-second capsule summary of what was happening, Towers swore under his breath and said, “I’ve got bad news for you, buddy. Very bad news …”
That was exactly how Moore’s Navy SEAL buddy Carmichael had put it only seconds after the platform’s lights had gone dark. He’d shouted, “We’ve been spotted!” Then had added, “Very bad news! We’ve been spotted!”
Carmichael had taken his three other SEALs up and onto the platform to try to defuse the explosives that the Revolutionary Guard troops had rigged there. Moore’s men were hanging beneath the pilings, and Moore knew that he needed to send off those guys already in the water. He ordered them to take the SDV and get out, which they reluctantly did. Then he called to his task-unit commander to get an RHIB (rigid-hull inflatable boat) sent from the Iraqi patrol boat that was in truth being operated by the SEALs. The Zodiac would carry them out of there much faster than the SDV. Only problem was, they’d need a diversion to keep the troops on the platform busy while they took off.
“Mako Two, get your team in the water! Drop!”
“Roger that!” hollered Carmichael, the sound of gunfire cracking between his words.
Moore watched and waited as one man hit the waves, then a second.
Where were the others? “Mako Two, only see two guys?”
“I know! I know! Six has been hit. I gotta get him out!”
Many voices broke over the radio, and more gunfire crackled through, like static punctuating the fear voiced by his men, and then, for a moment that seemed like all the years he spent grieving, there was only the sound of Moore’s breathing. And then …
Towers was still talking to him. “Moore, are you there?”
“I’m here.”
“Listen to me, and listen good. Seems your agency has always had a keen interest in Mr. Jorge Rojas—so much so that they’ve had an agent working deep cover for over a year now. It’s a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing.”
“Wait a minute. What the hell are you saying?”
“I’m saying it’s the kid’s girlfriend, bro. She’s CIA. Recruited in Europe a long time ago. She’s a blue badger like you. And now you’re telling me you’ve just lost her to some other guys?”
Moore gritted his teeth. “Holy shit. But no, no, no. We haven’t lost them yet. I’ll get back to you.”
Surprised? Moore wasn’t. Annoyed? Frustrated beyond belief? Ready to kill someone who sat behind a desk and had failed to tip off his bosses? Of course. Task Force Juárez’s mission file had been either ignored or not delivered to the right desk to allow for a coordinated and concerted effort on behalf of all agents working on the case. This wasn’t the first time late or fragmented information resulted in a communication breakdown in one of Moore’s operations, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. Breakdowns between agencies such as the FBI and the CIA were far more common, which made this revelation all the more aggravating.
He hung up as Fitzpatrick and Torres turned the corner in their little white rental car. He climbed onto the backseat. “See the blue car up there. Hold back. If they’re not dead, they’ll be coming out the door right there.”
Lo and behold, they did, both Miguel and Sonia, escorted by a pair of men holding them at gunpoint. They climbed into the sedan, and the car sped off.
“I’ll wait a few seconds, then follow,” said Fitzpatrick.
“Keep your distance,” Moore warned him.
“Corrales has a lot of enemies,” Torres said. “His enemies need to be our friends, but they’re not. They’ve stolen our cash cow!”
“Yeah, ain’t that our bad luck,” said Moore.
“We’ve got nothing,” Torres spat. “What the hell will I tell the boss?”
“Easy does it, big boy. I told you the group I work for is very powerful, much more powerful than a bunch of fucking punks with guns.”
Moore looked at Fitzpatrick, who almost cracked a smile.
“If we lose them, someone will have to pay for this,” Torres warned. “And it won’t be me.”
Moore snorted. “If you don’t shut up, I’m going to kick your fat ass out of this car and make you walk …tough guy.”
Torres smirked and leaned forward. “Just don’t lose them,” he told Fitzpatrick.
Look, I demand to know where you’re taking us,” said Miguel. “If this is just a simple kidnapping, my father will pay the money and we’ll be done with this by the end of the day, all right?”
The driver, whose dark complexion was hard to read as they passed into the shadows of the taller buildings, glanced back and smiled. “Okay, boss, whatever you say.”
“Who are you guys, and where are we going?”
“If you keep talking, we will put a gag in your mouth,” said the driver.
Sonia put a hand on Miguel’s, while the guy in the passenger’s seat kept his pistol aimed at her. Another carful of men had joined them, and they were following.
“Miguel, it’s okay,” Sonia said. “They won’t tell us anything, so don’t waste your energy. Let’s focus on staying calm. Everything will be all right.”
“How do you know?” he said, tears welling in his eyes. “They’re going to torture us and kill us. Fuck this shit! Fuck it. We need to get out!”
“No,” she said, squeezing his hand. “Don’t do anything stupid. We’ll be okay. They just want money. This is just what your father was afraid of. I just wish Corrales had done a better job.”
“I’m going to kill him when I see him.”
She shrugged. “He might be dead already.”
Corrales had managed to call the hotel and got Ignacio on the phone. Ignacio, in turn, had run off from the front desk and had found María. Corrales babbled somewhat incoherently to her, told her he needed her and some guys to come down and pick him up. Said he was going to find a hospital, that he’d been shot.
He staggered out of the building, walked about a block, then didn’t remember anything else.
“There you go, Dante. There you go,” said Pablo.
He flickered open his eyes, realized he was back in his hotel room, and there was a man he didn’t recognize standing at Pablo’s side. This man had long gray hair, a thin beard, and thick glasses.
“This is going to be very expensive,” said the man.
“Dante, he’s a doctor, and he’s going to get the bullet out of your shoulder—no questions asked.”
“How did you get away?”
Pablo breathed deeply. “I got one of them. I don’t know what happened to Raúl. Then I found you on the street, just in time, too—but don’t worry about that now. He’s going to give you some drugs to put you out. Then you’ll feel better. I talked to María and some of the boys. They’re flying down to get us like you asked.”
“We can’t leave. We lost the boss’s son!”
“Easy, easy. We’ll find them.”
“No, we won’t. The fucking Guatemalans have them!”
Pablo recoiled. “Why?”
“Because I didn’t pay them, and now I have to tell Castillo what’s happened. He’ll have me killed.”
“No, don’t tell him anything. I’ll take care of it. Rest easy now, my friend. Everything will be okay.”
But it wouldn’t, and as the old man put a mask across Corrales’s face, Corrales saw the fires of his youth rage once more, and his parents, their faces burning, the ski
n melting off, walked out of their old hotel, and his father raised a finger at him and said, “I told you never to join the cartel. They killed us. And now they will kill you.”
IF I RETREAT, KILL ME
San Juan Chamula
Chiapas, Mexico
MOORE, FITZPATRICK, AND TORRES followed the blue car and a green-and-white van that seemed to be leading the car, out of San Cristóbal de las Casas and into the foothills, toward the small town of San Juan Chamula, about ten kilometers away. It was there, Moore had read, that the indigenous Tzotzil Mayan people were preparing for an early-summer carnival that attracted tourists. Dancing, singing, live music, fireworks, and a long parade through the village would not only entertain visitors but bring much-needed revenue into the otherwise poor town.
Torres repeatedly ordered Fitzpatrick to get closer, and Moore struck down those commands, saying that if they were spotted, the hostages could be killed—and there’d be no cash cow for Señor Zúñiga, nor any negotiations to open up border tunnels for use by the Sinaloas.
What neither Torres nor Fitzpatrick knew was that Miguel’s girlfriend, one Sonia Batista (whose real name was Olivia Montello), had a chip embedded in her shoulder that would allow the Agency to track her position. Moore needed to find a moment away from Torres when he could fill in Fitzpatrick on what was happening; for now all these two guys needed to know was that they should keep their distance. In the meantime, Towers and the rest of the Agency were doing everything they could to positively identify these men, yet Moore and Towers agreed that they were more than likely Avenging Vultures, the Guatemalan death squad that had, for some reason, double-crossed the Juárez Cartel. Moore and the others were, after all, just a few hundred kilometers from the Guatemalan border, and the relationship between the Guatemalans and the Juárez Cartel was well documented. What had soured between the groups Moore did not know, but these guys weren’t your young, dumb, off-the-shelf thugs. Back at the first briefing, Towers had said these guys made the sicarios look tame. Many of them were ex-military and/or had been members of a Guatemalan Special Forces group known as the Kaibiles, whose motto was: If I advance, follow me. If I stop, urge me on. If I retreat, kill me.