Stealth Attack

by John Gilstrap

  Boxers nosed the Durango into a spot between a ’70sera Harley and a fairly new S-Class Mercedes. “I’ve been to worse places,” he said.

  Dawkins said, “If you’re packing, you’d better keep ’em covered up.”

  “Oh, we’re packing,” Boxers said. “And I’ll do my best.”

  Jonathan said, “Historically, attempts to disarm Big Guy have not gone well for the disarmers.”

  “Remember, there are cops in here.”

  “Crooked ones,” Jonathan said.

  “They still look after their own.”

  “I promise we’ll do our best to be good,” Jonathan said. “But let’s not lose sight of the stakes, okay? There’s a terrified boy out there somewhere whose fuse is burning very short very fast.”

  Jonathan’s first thought as they crossed the threshold into the bar was that it smelled like Mexico. Old food, stale sweat, and booze. He’d stipulate that there were probably better places—there’d almost have to be—but in his line of work, he never got to spend any time in them. Three seconds in, he could feel the sweat blooming on his back. It had to be eighty-five degrees in here. Perhaps as an accommodation to the heat, perhaps for privacy, the light was way too dim, lending a sepia tone to all of the pastels on the walls.

  “Opening a window might help,” Boxers grumbled.

  “Don’t want to let the flies out,” Jonathan said.

  “Please behave yourselves,” Dawkins said.

  As they took a couple more steps inside, conversation stopped and heads turned. Tough to tell whether it was because they were gringos, as Dawkins had predicted, or because Big Guy’s head nearly brushed the low ceiling. “Hola,” Jonathan said.

  Back in their days in the Unit, Jonathan and Boxers had spent far too many years on deployment in Central America, taking care of business that Uncle Sam officially had no hand in. Both of them spoke fluent Spanish, albeit with accents. Jonathan’s words had a Colombian flare to them, while Boxers’ carried a trace of South Carolina.

  Saying hello had the effect of hastening the departure of about half of the dozen or so people in the bar. Behind the bar, a large woman with hard features pushed a rag in large circles across the chipped and ring-stained surface.

  “Hola, Sofia,” Dawkins said with a little wave.

  The barkeep’s face showed a flash of recognition, but she remained silent as she watched them.

  All but one of the customers were men, and the one who wasn’t looked like she wanted to go to sleep. Maybe seventeen years old, her eyes looked at once empty and frightened.

  “Excuse me,” Jonathan said to his team, and he walked toward the exhausted girl.

  “Hello, Miss,” he said in Spanish.

  The man she was with stood up and went chest-to-chest with Jonathan, maybe twelve inches separating them. “Get away from us,” he said, also in Spanish.

  “I don’t want any trouble,” Jonathan said.

  “Then go away.”

  “In a second,” Jonathan said. He stepped to the side to see past the guy he would bet money was her pimp. “Miss, you don’t look well. Are you—”

  The protector planted a hand on Jonathan’s chest. “I already told you—”

  Jonathan fired a piston of a punch from down low into the pimp’s gut, driving all the wind out of his lungs. The guy collapsed back toward his chair, only he missed it and ended up doing a butt-plant on the sticky tile floor. To anyone watching, it would appear that the guy had had a seizure.

  Jonathan stepped around to get closer to the girl, while Big Guy moved closer to the pimp. The guy wouldn’t be getting up for a minute or two—until he could breathe again—and the towering presence of Boxers might encourage him to fake injury for a while longer.

  The girl scooted her chair back to pull away from Jonathan.

  He held up his hands. A gesture of friendship. “I mean no harm,” he said. “Mind if I sit down?”

  She clearly didn’t know what to say, and it wouldn’t have mattered. He grabbed the chair that used to belong to the pimp and lifted it over the guy, turning it backward as he sat and hugged the seatback. Ordinarily, it would be a mistake to turn his back on the room, but he knew that Big Guy and Thor would be his eyes.

  “My name is Neil,” he said. “What’s yours?”

  The girl cast a terrified look at the man on the floor.

  Jonathan looked up at Boxers. “Take him outside, will you?”

  “Be a pleasure,” Boxers said. He bent down and wrapped his arms around the pimp’s middle and lifted him like a dog, arms and legs dangling, struggling to fight. Maybe pretending to struggle to fight.

  Somewhere in all the excitement, the place had emptied out. All except for Sofia.

  “Now,” Jonathan said to the girl. “It’s just us. What’s your name?”

  “Me llamo Erica,” she said. “My name is Erica,” but the accent was wrong. Spanish was not her native language.

  Jonathan switched back to English. “Where are you from, Erica?”

  The new language startled her. “Who are you?” The native accent was clear as crystal in her English.

  “Australia or New Zealand?” he asked with a smile. “I can never tell the two apart.”

  “New Zealand. Korokoro, a little town outside of Wellington. You’re American?”

  “Guilty as charged. Now, tell me the truth. Who is that guy you were with?”

  She dropped her gaze to the floor and brought her hands to her eyes. Her shoulders shook, but she made no noise.

  “Look,” Jonathan said. “Things happen, and there’s no shame in bad stuff. If that’s the case here—if that guy is bad news to you—I can make him go away. I promise. Would you like me to do that?”

  She kept her face buried in her hands.

  Jonathan turned to get Sofia’s attention, but found he already had it. In Spanish, he asked, “Could you bring a glass of water, please?”

  Then, to Erica: “Was he hurting you?”

  Moving very slowly, Erica brought her hands down. As she did, the water arrived. To the bartender, Jonathan said, “Are you Sofia Reyes?”

  The bartender’s head twitched. A yes perhaps?

  “Pleased to meet you, Sofia,” Jonathan said in Spanish. “We need to talk.”

  Sofia ignored him as she handed the glass to Erica. “Here you go, little girl,” she said in Spanish. Up at the front of the bar, the door opened as Big Guy reentered.

  Erica’s hands were shaking as she took a sip. Looking back at the dirty floor, she said, “He . . . raped me. Said he was going to sell me.” She spoke in a monotone, as if something inside her had died.

  Back at the front, Big Guy said, “I’ll be back,” and he stormed outside.

  “You won’t have to worry about him anymore,” Jonathan said. “Are you alone with him? Or are there . . . others?”

  She shook her head and looked away again. “There were five of us last time I was there.”

  “Last time you were where?” Jonathan beckoned for Dawkins to join them.

  “At the house,” Erica said. “You know, where . . .”

  She couldn’t finish the sentence, and Jonathan didn’t need her to. He was missing Gail’s presence. This kind of thing was out of his depth. He had it on good authority that he didn’t do sensitive well.

  “Where is this place?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I do,” Sofia said. “Why do you want to go?”

  Jonathan regarded Sofia with suspicion. What could he safely share? “Tell me how reliable she is, Thor,” he said in English.

  “Not a single tire track on my back,” Dawkins replied. She hadn’t thrown him under the bus. Yet, anyway.

  “Two children were kidnapped from El Paso a day or two ago,” Jonathan explained to Sofia in Spanish. “We’re here to bring them home.”

  “El Paso is a long way,” Sofia said.

  “We have reason to believe they were brought here to Sinaloa.”

  S
ofia made a face that Jonathan had a hard time interpreting. Feel free to be as stupid as you wish, was one thought that came to mind.

  Jonathan turned his attention back to Erica, switching back to English. “This place . . .”

  “It’s a whorehouse,” Erica said.

  “You never have to go back there,” Jonathan said.

  “But what about Esteban?”

  “Is that the man my friend just carried out of here?”

  A little nod. The thought of him terrified her.

  “You won’t have to worry about him again.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  The door opened again, and Boxers entered. He gave a thumbs-up. Jonathan saw blood on his shirt.

  “Yes,” Jonathan said. “I really can.”

  “This whorehouse,” Sofia told him in Spanish, “is a place where kidnapped children are often brought. It is a terrible business and a violent place.”

  “I want to go back to my family,” Erica said.

  “Where are they?” Jonathan asked.

  “Last time I saw them, they were in Puerto Vallarta. We were on holiday there. And then . . .”

  Jonathan leaned in. “Please finish that story. As much as you can tell me.”

  Boxers locked the door and stepped closer to listen.

  Erica thought for a long time before starting her answer. During that minute or so, she seemed to grow smaller in her seat. Her eyes unfocused as her mind returned to the night when she and a boy she’d met—Alejo, she thought, but wasn’t sure—decided to step off the grounds of the resort and take in the local nightlife. They’d stopped in a bar they’d noticed from the bus on the way in. It looked like it had a mechanical bull on the inside, and that was something Erica had always wanted to try.

  After about an hour of hanging out and a single go at the bull, which didn’t end well for her at all, they decided to leave. The night was darker than she liked, but the resort was only about a half mile away. They hadn’t gone very far when the attackers struck.

  Erica sobbed as she told of the machete strike that cleaved Alejo’s skull. How she could see the glimmer of the blood in the moonlight. They’d cut off her attempt to scream by clamping hands around her throat, and then they put something over her head, threw her into a vehicle, and the nightmare had begun.

  As Erica spoke, Jonathan felt his blood pressure rising. Behind him, Boxers literally was growling. He did that as he got angry.

  “How long ago was that?” Sofia asked. That she spoke English surprised him.

  “I don’t know,” Erica said. “Weeks. Maybe months.”

  “At the house,” Dawkins said. “Among the people who entertain the clients—”

  “Among the whores,” Erica said. “If I can be one, you can at least say it.”

  Dawkins blushed. “Yes, of course. Among the . . . among you, are there any boys?”

  Jonathan’s teeth clenched.

  “Boys who are whores?”

  “That’s what he means,” Jonathan said. He dreaded the answer. “Are there any?”

  “Come one, come all,” Erica said, snickering bitterly at her own double entendre. “There’s no end to what perverts like to do, or who they want to do it with.”

  “Have you had any new whores arrive in the past couple of days?” Boxers asked.

  “They come in and out. All the time.”

  Boxers stayed on point, unswayed by issues of sensitivity. “We’re looking for two kids, about fourteen years old. A black boy and a white girl. Does that sound familiar to you?”

  Erica seemed frightened by the physical presence of Boxers. “I–I haven’t been there much in the past few days. Esteban called me his special girl. I was . . . exclusive. . .” She looked to Sofia for guidance.

  “Okay,” Jonathan said. “You don’t have to say any more.” He looked first to Big Guy and then to Thor before concentrating his gaze back on Sofia. “Ma’am, can you take care of Erica? Give her shelter for a while?”

  “Of course,” Sofia said. “What are you planning to do?”

  Jonathan said nothing, let her connect the dots on her own.

  “These are not people to anger,” Sofia said.

  Jonathan forced a smile. “Neither are we.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Venice listened to the address that Jonathan read to her and entered it into her computer. “Is this it?” she asked. “Is this where they took Roman?”

  “I hope not,” Jonathan said. “I deeply hope not. But maybe. It’s a place where kidnapped children are often brought. I need you to work your magic and make sure to take down any security cameras they might have.”

  “Why? What are your plans?”

  “My plan is to bring Roman back if he’s there.”

  “And if he’s not?” Venice asked.

  “I’m not sure what you’re asking me. If he’s not, he’s not. We can’t know until we look. It’s the only lead we have so far unless they’ve come through with the ransom details. Have they?”

  “No.” She couldn’t put her finger on why, but this mission to the whorehouse felt irresponsible to her. Unjustified. A thread of possibility that didn’t seem enough to justify the risk. What if Digger got himself killed in this thing? Where would that leave Roman? Where would that leave her little boy?

  The plan was to wait for the details of the ransom demand and then move on that. In that case, at least they’d have something. This felt too much like a wild guess.

  “Think about what happens to the children in that place,” Jonathan said, as if reading her mind. “Maybe it’s Roman, and maybe it’s not, but this is a thing that needs to be done, Mother Hen. You know that, even if you don’t want to.”

  “What makes you think that I can even hack into Mexican databases?” she asked. “I mean, they’re in Spanish, right?”

  “Since when do ones and zeroes have accents? Isn’t computer code just computer code?”

  Digger had no idea what he was talking about, and she was too worried to explain it to him. “Look, I’ll do my best.”

  Her computer dinged with an alert.

  “I’ve got to go.”

  The ping from her computer likely was important. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the federal government sprayed money as if it were so much water through a fire hose. Half the police departments in the country got some form of armored personnel carrier, every cop got new body armor, and the emergency response community became buried in firearms and bullets. It made sense at the time, and it immeasurably advanced the sophistication of even small departments.

  Among the monies spent was an open secret of a program known as the Interstate Crime Information System, or ICIS. Pronounced EYE-sis, the acronym predated the homophone associated with Al Qaeda in Iraq, and apparently, no one was inclined to change either of them. The purpose of the program was to provide a secure information mechanism by which law enforcement agencies could be informed of ongoing operations from other agencies, more or less in real time. Thus, if a car was stolen in one state and a child was abducted in a different state, investigators in both jurisdictions would be able to deduce whether or not the two incidents were related.

  The feds exonerated themselves from contributing, of course, but they were more than willing to monitor the traffic and cherry-pick the cases that intrigued them.

  To Venice’s eye, ICIS was one of the few acts of federal largesse that provided exactly the service it was designed to provide, and it did it in a way that helped frontline emergency responders. It also proved to be invaluable to looky-loos like Venice when she wanted to peek into ongoing criminal activity.

  Proactive alerts were one of the most valuable elements of the ICIS program. With a little bit of easy programming, the system would let her know right away when a person she’d designated as a target broke any law.

  Today, she’d loaded the system with as many names as she could think of who might be associated with Roman and/or his disappearance, plus she’d e
ntered Patrick Kelly’s license plate into the ALPR network. When a name popped up, or when a significant event occurred in a geographical area she targeted, her computer would ping.

  She changed screens and saw an item from Prince William County, Virginia. That’s where Patrick Kelly’s Ford last passed a camera, and it was now the place where police were responding to multiple reports of a shooting in a restaurant parking lot.

  When multiple reports were lodged on a single incident, that almost always meant that it was real. And because reporters of all stripes monitored emergency traffic on their radio scanners, dozens of them would be racing to the scene with as much zeal as the police and fire and rescue personnel. Often as not, the reporters arrived first.

  Knowing that it would be a few minutes before the police named names, she opened up another screen that would allow her to search for unofficial reports from bloggers and amateur journalists. Citizen journalists were one of the primary drivers behind the cratering of journalistic standards around the world. A scoop was a scoop, after all, and clicks paid the bills—whether for a major network or daily paper or a guy living in his mom’s basement. No one needed the so-called facts to actually be true anymore, when a story that was nearly true got the clicks. You could always apologize later. Or settle the defamation suit.

  For Venice’s purposes, though, rumormongering meant more raw data to analyze on her own. She’d learned a long time ago not to trust the analysis of experts. In her experience, the higher the profile of an expert, the more likely he was to make the data fit whatever agenda or book he was selling.

  It took a few minutes, but she finally found a group of bloggers and internet news mavens who trolled the southern and western regions of Northern Virginia.

  Almost instantly, she was rewarded with a blurry photo of a bullet-riddled Mercedes with the caption:

  “Dud shit in pkg litof ft frddy”

  Perhaps one downside of being first was to be scared enough for your hands to shake. Venice’s instinct was to translate that to Dude shot in parking lot of Fort . . . Something. Assuming, of course, that the incident did not involve outdoor defecation.