Divide & Conquer

by McDonald, Murray

  “Fat Jake’s contact and my fucking customers!” El Jefe shouted, throwing his glass at the Gulf Cartel man.

  Luis managed to avoid the glass as he stepped back from the captive. The ramifications of the Gulf Cartel gaining their East coast business were catastrophic. They were just managing to keep their heads above water while they tried to renew the routes they had lost but losing them permanently to their main rival was unthinkable, not only for the loss to them but the massive gain to the Gulf Cartel. It could spell the end for Los Zetas.

  “We have to stop them meeting!” exclaimed Luis forcefully.

  “I know that!” shouted El Jefe impatiently. Stating the obvious was not helpful. “I’ll get Juan onto it,” added El Jefe confidently. Juan was his number two in command. El Jefe had no more trusted or loyal follower than Juan Torres. They joked they were twins from other mothers, having been best friends their entire lives. He was also Luis’ arch nemesis; seldom did they see eye to eye but thankfully Luis’ blood kept him safe. While El Jefe lived, Luis, his nephew, was safe.

  “Juan is in Columbia, he’s not due back until tomorrow. It may be too late by then,” replied Luis. “No matter what it takes, they can’t meet!” emphasized Luis. “Even if we can’t find the meeting, we have to stop it happening!”

  “And how exactly do you propose we do that?” asked El Jefe.

  “You’ve got 10,000 men! Use them!” replied Luis matter of factly.

  El Jefe eyed his nephew carefully for any sign of dissent but none existed. The suggestion to use his men was a genuine one and had not been meant flippantly.

  El Jefe swept his hand in the direction of the captive man before taking a seat. His men did not need any further direction, the captive would be dead in minutes. His body would be tossed in the back of a truck and would be dumped as publicly as possible in the middle of the city.

  “Where is the boy?” asked El Jefe as the door closed behind his men dragging the living corpse.

  Luis took a seat on a sofa opposite his uncle. He pressed the handkerchief tighter against the wound on his cheek before answering. “In the servants’ quarters. One of the maids is keeping an eye on him.”

  The ranch was a sprawling estate, 50,000 acres that skirted the northern limits of Nuevo Laredo city. The main ranch house sat atop a hillside that afforded a view over the majority of both the Mexican and American portions of the linked cities. El Jefe had no interest in farming and after purchasing the farm had quickly removed all but the essential living quarters, removing a number of farm buildings to ensure an unencumbered view to the cities below.

  “Get a message to his mother. If the meeting happens with her husband’s men and the Americans, her son dies!” he ordered. “We’ll see if she really does know anything!”

  “Brilliant!” offered Luis. Stroking his uncle’s ego was never a bad move, particularly after just having pissed him off. He got up and walked to the desk in the corner of the living room and grabbed another unused prepaid cell phone. He’d make the call straight away.

  Chapter 17

  “NO!!!” screamed Alexa as she threw her hands at Pyotr’s rifle barrel. Her hand caught the barrel just as the first of the three bullets was being ejected. The resultant move was just enough to ensure three clean misses and Sean remained standing.

  Unfortunately, Sean’s reaction, although slower than Pyotr’s, was almost immeasurably so and his bullet remained true to its original course and hit Pyotr center mass.

  Pytor spun back and slammed into the wall as the bullet tore at his chest. Pyotr’s rifle clattered to the floor followed shortly by Pyotr as he slid unceremoniously down the wall. His eyes stared at Alexa, the question etched on his face. “What the hell was she doing?!”

  Sean trained his pistol on Alexa as she stood up, mouth agape, watching her partner slide down the wall. Her weapon, although not raised in anger, was still in play and as far as Sean was concerned, still a threat, despite the fact she had most definitely saved his life.

  “What’s happening?” cried Katie Fox from the living room. She was doing as Sean had told her, keeping her head down but he should have told her to keep her mouth shut.

  Alexa looked at Sean in the eye and carefully placed her weapon on the ground. The act of trust was rewarded by Sean. He lowered his weapon and allowed Alexa to move towards Pyotr.

  Pyotr winced in pain as she grabbed at his chest, before slapping him hard across the face.

  “You could have told me you were wearing a vest! I thought you were dead!” she shouted angrily, standing up to face Sean.

  Sean watched in amazement as Alexa first slapped and then turned her back on Pytor. He was obviously struggling for breath and Sean wouldn’t be surprised if two or three ribs weren’t cracked and from the noises he was making, his lung was probably punctured.

  “You should get him to a hospital,” suggested Sean.

  “I’ll take him right after you,” replied Alexa, pointing at Sean’s leg.

  Sean looked down. His pants were soaked in blood. He pulled at the fabric and examined the wound; it was merely a flesh wound, a splinter from the wall and not a bullet.

  “I’ll live,” said Sean, turning his attention back to Alexa and Pyotr.

  “Sean?!” shouted Katie from the living room.

  “I’m fine, just wait there!”

  Pyotr almost forgot his injuries as he heard Sean react to his name.

  “You are Sean Fox?” he asked in astonishment through the pain, first looking at Sean and then at Alexa who was nodding her head just enough for him to understand that that was why she had diverted his shots. How could they kill Sean Fox’s widow? If he were alive, she was not a widow. A mistake had been made somewhere and she may not be a threat if her husband was alive.

  Sean had recognized the AS Val rifle even when looking down its barrel. The chances of two assassins favoring that weapon were nigh on nil. That left standard issue equipment which meant they were Russians or their allies. Initially he just wondered what the hell the Russians were doing involved in the mess but their knowing his name and the way in which it was said had just added an entirely new twist to the day’s events.

  “Sorry, do I know you guys?” asked Sean, feeling the trigger on his pistol once again.

  “No and you don’t need to,” offered Alexa turning and helping Pyotr to his feet. “We’re just leaving.”

  Alexa put Pyotr’s arm over her shoulder and made for the door. Sean stepped into their path. His gun pointed in their general direction rather than directly at them but the meaning was not lost. They were going nowhere.

  “It’s better for everybody if you let us leave,” offered Alexa in a conciliatory tone, allowing her rifle barrel to point to the floor.

  “You came here to kill whoever was in this house,” replied Sean. He was beginning to get a little pissed. “It was only when you,” he said looking to Alexa, “recognized me, that you stopped him,” added Sean, pointing his pistol at Pyotr.

  Both stayed silent, neither wanted nor was able to admit the truth.

  “It makes me wonder what you would have done had the lady of the house come out first?” pondered Sean, staring into Alexa’s eyes.

  Alexa could not hold Sean’s gaze. The guilt of what they had been ordered to do weighed too heavily on her mind, telling Sean all he needed to know.

  “But why?” was all he could ask, as the impact of what he had stopped hit home.

  Alexa looked at Pyotr. He was the more senior of the two agents. He struggled onto his feet and pushed Alexa aside. The impact of the round was lessening and he was regaining his breath.

  “We have no idea. All I can say is that we have followed our orders. You being here meant that our orders no longer stood but I would advise taking your wife and child and getting out of here. Others may have different orders or may be more flexible around the orders they have.”

  As bizarre as the situation seemed, Sean stepped aside, allowing the two Russians to leave. He
could see the relief on their faces, neither was happy at whatever their orders were and like Sean, they had simply being following orders sent down from on high. He knew they had already divulged more than they should, and for that, he was grateful.

  “Sorry about the ribs!” he said, closing the door behind them. He knew pursuing them further was pointless. In any event, he had the small issue of convincing the wife that he wasn’t her husband. He’d worry about how the Russians fitted in after that.

  As he turned towards the living room, the dead Mexican’s phone began to ring. The Mexican Hat Dance ring tone had Katie Fox running from the living room, a look of horror on her face.

  Chapter 18

  “What do we do?” asked Katie, grabbing the phone from the floor, her voice cracking from panic.

  “Well, we can’t answer it!” replied Sean looking at the handset as uselessly as Katie.

  “They have our baby!” she explained, pleading at Sean.

  Sean really had to clear up the not being her husband issue and it not being his baby but such pedantry could wait until the phone stopped ringing.

  “I know but we can’t answer without putting him at risk.”

  The phone continued to ring. Both looked at it helplessly as the Mexican Hat Dance continued on a seemingly endless and infuriating loop.

  As the tune ended, Katie dropped the phone on the floor and threw herself into Sean’s arms. Tears streamed from her face and soaked his shirt as she clung to him with every ounce of strength she possessed.

  “I thought you were dead! God, I thought you were dead!” she whispered next to his ear between her sobs.

  Sean felt the weight of the world fall on him as the wife whose husband was most definitely dead clung to him in relief.

  “I’m not your husband, he is dead,” Sean said quietly but firmly, extracting himself from Katie’s hold.

  Katie swung a fist at Sean. “Stop saying that! Why would you say that?! You are Sean Fox!” she cried, looking him deep in the eye.

  A statement that Sean could not deny. He was Sean Fox but not her Sean Fox.

  “I am Sean Fox,” he said and received a smile almost instantly from Katie. “But not your Sean Fox,” he added in explanation.

  Katie looked at him with concern. “You must have hit your head. Head injuries can cause memory loss,” she offered, reassuringly stroking the side of his face.

  Sean pulled back. Her intimate touch, after six months in the wilderness of Afghanistan, was very pleasant but also very wrong. He was not who she thought he was.

  Sean led Katie through to the dining room which was untouched by the earlier violence and lacked any recent corpses. He sat her down in one of the chairs and pulled another out to allow him to face her.

  “Please just hear me out,” he asked and received a nod of acceptance in response.

  “My name is Sean Fox. I am 39 years old and have never been married. Up until 18 months ago, I worked for the government and only arrived back in the United States this morning after being in Afghanistan for six months.”

  Katie had nodded in agreement to every statement but the last. “You were here three months ago,” she corrected. “That’s when you went missing and we thought you had been killed.”

  Sean shook his head in frustration. “No I was in Afghanistan for six months and pretty much most of the year before that.”

  Katie smiled. “It’s OK Sean I’ve seen TV shows about this, the confusion, the denial, the loss of time, it’s Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.” She worked her way forward in the chair and reached out to him again. “I understand and we’ll get through it together!”

  Sean stood up in frustration. Katie pulled back but did not react. Obviously, the TV shows had prepared her for such outbursts. None of it was helping Sean get his point across.

  “Katie, your name is Katie, right?”

  Katie nodded her head and smiled.

  “I don’t know what has happened but I am a different Sean Fox. I am not your husband and I need you to accept that. I will get to the bottom of whatever has happened but your son…”

  Katie’s face changed. The euphoria of having her husband back was suddenly trumped by the reminder of her son being kidnapped and being in the hands of the Mexican gang that her husband had just killed two members of.

  “…I need to know everything you know about the men that took him, ok?”

  Katie explained that the two dead Mexicans were part of the same gang that had taken her son and that their only demand was to meet Sean’s contacts, whoever they were.

  As she stopped speaking, she threw herself once again into his arms, the tears started to flow afresh. Sean debated pushing her off once again but he would have done the same for any mother in that situation. She needed comfort, not more heartache.

  ***

  Neither knew what to say or what to do next. They just climbed into the car in silence and drove out of the estate. Had there been a flight available at that time of night, they would have caught it to anywhere it was going. As Alexa indicated for the motel they had been at earlier, Pyotr broke the silence. “Let’s head to San Antonio, I’d rather not stay in Laredo!”

  Alexa did not need to be asked twice. She killed the indicator and stepped on the gas.

  “We need to call in,” she said, knowing Pyotr was thinking the same.

  “I know,” he said heavily. His mind was elsewhere. Depending on how they handled their call in, there was just a chance they might manage to get out of the hole they were in.

  “If they order us back, what do we do?” asked Alexa.

  Pyotr didn’t answer straight away, as he considered the question. After a minute or two, he smiled and grabbed his phone.

  “Get me General Borodin!” barked Pyotr as the call was answered. Alexa looked on in panic, not having had the chance to debate how Pyotr would handle the call that held their lives in the balance.

  After a few seconds, Borodin came on the line.

  “Done?” asked Borodin.

  “Slight problem.”

  “What?!” boomed Borodin threateningly.

  “Sean Fox isn’t dead!”

  “What makes you think that?” asked Borodin, his voice heavy with suspicion.

  “He answered the door,” replied Pyotr. Although not technically true, Sean had been the first to react to Alexa and by default had answered their entry to the house.

  Silence reined as Borodin digested the information. Pyotr waited with bated breath as the future of his life hung in the balance. If he was ordered back, he was as good as dead. If he were put on hold and told to await further orders, he reckoned it was a fifty fifty. If they were stood down, he pretty much reckoned they were free and clear.

  Seconds felt like minutes as he awaited his fate. A deep guttural cough announced Borodin was about to speak. Pyotr held his breath.

  “I’ll call you back shortly!” said Borodin and hung up.

  “Shit!” replied Pyotr to the empty line.

  “What? What is it?!” clamored Alexa, desperate to know what was happening.

  Chapter 19

  Luis crushed the pre-paid cell and extracted another. He gave it ten minutes and tried the emergency cell phone again; it was switched off. Miguel was one of the oldest and most trusted members of Los Zetas. Not answering a call to the emergency cell phone was uncharacteristic but he could have been taking a piss, thought Luis. That was allowed but having it switched off was totally unacceptable and suggested something far more worrying.

  He tried again after thirty seconds; it was still off. Miguel would not let it run out of charge; it was for emergency contact and had to be available at all times. Miguel knew that. Luis began to panic. If anything had happened to the woman, all hell would break loose. El Jefe would not rest with killing the son in retaliation, there would be a very high probability that Luis may feature in any reprisals. Failure with El Jefe really wasn’t an option. Certainly not if Luis wanted to live. His life depended on securi
ng Fat Jake’s contacts.

  Luis had the landline number for the house but was loathed to use it. It went against every piece of field craft he had advocated over the last few years. Never ever use a line that could be traced or recorded. One-time pre-paid cell phones were a must and, even then, only in emergencies. Luis wanted to keep their voices from the authorities as much as anything else. With their voices came voice print analysis and with voice print analysis came tracking capabilities even with pre-paid cells. If they didn’t have the voiceprints, they couldn’t track them and as far as he knew, he had succeeded. To give that up for a phone not being answered was a risk. Too big a risk, he thought.

  Luis walked out into the warm night air and pointed to four guards. “Grab a truck, we’re going out!” he shouted.

  As he waited for the truck to materialize, Luis watched El Jefe appear, heavily armed from the ranch house. A large group of guards rushed to join him, including two of the men that Luis had pointed to.

  “Hey?!” shouted Luis at his two deserters.

  Both waved him off, El Jefe came first and foremost.

  Luis walked across the large compound and joined his uncle as another group of men appeared from one of the two barracks that secured the ranch and its surroundings. Over fifty Los Zetas were permanently at El Jefe’s beck and call and ensured the ranch was one of the most heavily guarded places in all of Mexico. El Jefe’s latest toys included two armored personnel carriers, Soviet BMP-2’s and an ex-soviet era Hind Mi24 attack chopper, all courtesy of the earlier unrest in the Ivory Coast.

  From what Luis could see, El Jefe was not looking at starting a full-scale war. The military vehicles were being left behind in favor of the heavily armored SUV’s. Five B7 level armored Lexus LX570’s were pulling up in front of El Jefe and full of his men. Pretty much capable of stopping even the largest of armor piercing rounds, God help anyone who got in their way.