by Mike Maden
“Thank you, Mr. Jackson. I think I catch the drift. Please continue with your presentation.”
Jackson gratefully closed the document and pulled up the original presentation file folder. “We estimate the person shooting the video was between five ten and five eleven, judging by the height of the image, which means that the camera operator was most likely a man,” Jackson added.
“So I take it we have some good video footage?” Jeffers asked. He was growing impatient. He wanted to see the video.
“I’m afraid it’s not like the movies, sir,” Navarro said. “Most cell phones utilize poor-quality plastic lenses with a fixed focal length and no shutter, and this particular video was shot in extremely low resolution, only 480 dpi, probably because the cell phone was low on memory. The true cost for the whole camera on these phones is less than forty dollars, usually. So the overall image quality we have is very poor. I cleaned it up as best I could, but there just isn’t enough data there for us to enhance the image any further at the moment.”
“That’s unfortunate,” Greyhill said. “Maybe we can send the video on to the FBI lab and see what they can do with it.” He saw Director Madrigal tense up at his suggestion. “You DEA guys have enough on your plate without going into the video business.”
“I think we should see the video now,” Jeffers suggested. He dimmed the lights with a remote control. Jackson hit the play button on his video controller.
Everybody in the room turned their focus to the far wall screen. A title card read REAL TIME, and then the clip began. The clip started with the Hummer already parked. The doors burst open immediately and the two killers leaped out, each cradling a shoulder-harnessed machine gun. The death-metal music blared in the room’s flush-mounted ceiling speakers.
The assassins advanced in lockstep, shouldered their weapons, took aim, fired. The machine-gun barrels flashed in controlled bursts. The speakers roared overhead so loud it was jarring.
“Sorry,” Jackson whispered in the dark as he thumbed the volume control down.
The cell-phone video camera had been in wide-shot mode. It caught the death of the first victims on the porch, the exploding plate-glass window, the house getting shot up. The camera tracked the killers marching onto the porch, then firing through the broken window until they were out of ammo, then high-fiving each other. The video clip cut to black. Total playing time was sixteen seconds and two frames.
Another title card appeared: HALF SPEED—MOS. Jackson froze the frame.
“In this clip, I would ask you to please observe the precision of the two shooters. Note the way they move, their target selection, their rate of fire.”
Jackson hit play again. The second clip started with the Hummer already parked, but this time the doors burst open in slow motion. The sound was cut out in this clip because the slow-motion effect distorted it too badly.
The two killers exited the Hummer as if they were stepping out of a space capsule into a weightless void that made the flickering, grainy images even more gruesomely surreal. The slow-motion flashes exploded out of the machine-gun suppressor ports like flaming stars, bursting and collapsing and bursting over and over again. The assassins’ slow, mechanical march toward the porch took forever, as did the emptying of the last rounds into the window. The video clip finally cut to black. Total playing time was thirty-two seconds and four frames.
“Mr. Jeffers, if you don’t mind,” Jackson asked.
The lights flicked on. Jeffers set the remote back down.
Jackson began to speak, but he noticed that the room sat in stunned silence. He realized this was the first time that any of them had seen the tape. He’d already reviewed it over a dozen times before the presentation so it no longer had an impact on him. He glanced around the room. It suddenly hit him.
He’d just forced the president of the United States to witness the murder of her own son. Twice. And in slow motion.
Jackson glanced over to his boss, Nancy Madrigal, for reassurance, but her eyes were focused on her hands clasped in her lap.
Myers stared at the blank screen. Her mouth was a thin scar on her emotionless face. Jackson saw the muscle flexing on her jaw line.
The other people around the table glanced mindlessly at their iPads, took sips of water, or pretended to take notes.
A few more agonizing moments passed.
“Madame President, I don’t know what to say,” Jackson stammered. “I’m so sorry.”
Myers turned toward Jackson. Her face softened. “There’s nothing to apologize for, Roy. I’m the one who asked to see the video. Your division has done an excellent job finding it and bringing it to our attention.”
“We’re just doing our jobs, ma’am.”
“So tell us, please, Mr. Navarro, what is the takeaway from these clips, particularly the second one we were asked to observe carefully?” Myers asked.
Navarro took a sip of coffee to clear his throat. “What’s clear to me is that these two men have received specialized training in weapons and tactics. These aren’t gangbangers running and gunning wild on the street.”
That was exactly Mike Early’s take on the flight to Denver. “So these are military or ex-military?” Myers asked.
“Not necessarily,” Navarro said. “I’m only suggesting they’ve received military-style training. I think they’re civilians.”
“Why?” Early asked.
Navarro pointed at his iPad. “If everyone will refer to the freeze-frame photo I pulled from the video—it’s on the first page of the upload I sent out.”
The others pulled up the photo in question. It showed the two masked assailants standing in front of the Hummer.
“The vehicle is a General Motors Hummer H2. The factory specs indicate that a stock H2 is 81.9 inches in height. But if you’ll notice, the tires are oversize, which means there’s a lift package on the suspension. Our best estimate is that another eight inches have been added to the overall height of the vehicle, so that puts it at just about seven and a half feet tall. Please notice where the heads of the two shooters are and that neither of them is standing fully erect. You can enlarge the photos on your screens, if you need to.”
“Wow. That means these guys are pretty tall. I’d guess around six three or six four,” Early offered.
“That’s our estimate, too,” Navarro said.
“So who are these men?” Donovan asked.
“They’re masked, wearing gloves. Combat gear. No visible skin, which means no visible scars or tattoos, if any exist. There weren’t any fingerprints or DNA on any of the shell casings or recovered bullets. It’s almost impossible to make a positive ID at this time,” Jackson said.
“You said ‘almost impossible’ to tell. I take it you have a hunch?” Myers asked.
“More than a hunch. As near as we can tell, these two men appear to be the same height and the same build, and their movements are highly synchronized, above and beyond any practiced training that they’ve had,” Jackson said.
“Synchronized in what way?”
“Like they’re used to doing things together a lot, or maybe even because they share the same build. Their movements are practically mirror images of each other.”
“You mean twins?” Early asked.
“Yes,” Jackson answered. “There are an estimated ten million identical twins in the world and one hundred and fifteen million fraternal twins.”
“Well, that really narrows it down,” Jeffers said.
“Technically, it does. That gets us down to less than three percent of the world’s population. Less than half of that if you only count adults, and half again if you discount women, which is probably a safe bet. Of course, there really is no way of telling who these men are precisely, but since we’re talking about El Paso, that’s Castillo Syndicate territory, and as it turns out, César Castillo has identical twin sons by the names of Aquiles and Ulises. According to records we’ve obtained through our counterparts in Mexico, the Castillo brothers are each six
foot three.”
“And I take it we still don’t have any witnesses at the scene who will identify the twins as the shooters?” Greyhill asked.
“No, but Mr. Navarro was able to put them in the vicinity at the time of the incident,” Jackson said.
“How?” Myers asked.
“By pulling up traffic-camera images of both men in Juárez approximately three hours before and one hour after the incident.”
Myers frowned. “But not in El Paso?”
“No.”
“Were they seen inside the Hummer?”
“No. Nor were they in tactical gear. Either by accident or intent, they went to a location outside of traffic-camera range. There, they could have changed into tactical gear, stolen the Hummer, crossed the border, committed the shootings, crossed back over the border, ditched the Hummer and the tactical gear, then returned back to their own vehicle.”
“That’s a lot of ifs,” Greyhill said.
Jackson shrugged. “It’s not conclusive, but it’s another straw on the camel’s back.”
Donovan leaned forward. “So do you think the Castillo twins are the shooters?”
Jackson hesitated. “At the very least, they’re the prime suspects. And they certainly have the means, motive, and opportunity.”
Myers glowered at Jackson. “You were asked a straightforward question. The answer is either yes or no. Which is it, Mr. Jackson?”
Jackson glanced back at his boss, Nancy Madrigal. Are you sure you want to go through with this? Madrigal nodded in the affirmative. “From an intelligence perspective? The answer is yes. No question in my mind. But without further evidence, it seems to me it would be difficult to obtain a conviction in an American court of law.”
Myers turned to her attorney general. “Do you agree with Mr. Jackson’s legal opinion?”
Lancet leaned back in her chair, processing the president’s question. “A conviction would be difficult, yes, and probably impossible in an American court, based on the lack of hard admissible evidence. But the rules of evidence are one thing; the question of guilt is quite another. I agree with Mr. Jackson’s intelligence assessment. As a former prosecutor, my gut tells me these two men are the shooters. I’m just not sure what that gets us. The question now is, what do we do with this new information?”
“Same problem, same solution. We’ll hand our analysis off to the Mexican government and ask them to investigate further,” Myers said. “At the very least they can bring them in for questioning.”
“It’s one thing to ask the Mexicans to arrest a dealer or a shooter. It’s something else again to ask them to bring in the sons of César Castillo,” Madrigal said.
“I’m the first to admit I’m no expert on Mexican politics, but it seems to me that they would want to cooperate on this matter, just out of a sense of human decency if nothing else. They’ve partnered with us on the drug war for years. All we’re asking for is further investigation. What am I missing?” Myers asked.
All eyes turned to Dr. Strasburg, who’d been as silent as a Buddha until now.
“Madame President, your counterpart, President Antonio Guillermo Barraza, was also just recently elected to office. And like you, he narrowly won a hotly contested race, and he prevailed, in part, because he promised, like you, to give his people a respite. Mr. Molina, would you please tell the president about the AFI?”
The ICE director nodded. “The first thing President Vicente Fox did when he was elected in 2001 to combat the pervasive corruption within the Mexican law enforcement community was to form the AFI, the Agencia Federal de Investigación, the equivalent of our FBI, which actually trained and equipped the AFI. The AFI became the premier antidrug agency in Mexico. But the Mexicans recently dissolved the AFI, which sent a powerful signal to the drug cartels that Mexico intends to stop seriously prosecuting the drug war against them. We suspect cash was probably exchanged in the deal, and maybe even a truce brokered. President Obama’s ‘Dream’ executive order also ended deportation of young illegals, which sent another powerful signal to the cartels: you can start sending your mules across the border again.”
Strasburg continued. “The American people are tired of the battlefield deaths and casualties of our troops in the far-flung corners of the Middle East. The majority of Americans want an end to those wars and want our troops to come home and this is one of the reasons why you were elected. We’ve expended a great deal of blood and treasure on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and with what result? As likely as not, people who don’t like us will return to power—maybe under a different name or party or platform—and we’re already seeing a return to the car bombings and suicide attacks of the previous years. And without putting too fine a point on it, the truth of the matter is, the vast majority of Americans paid far more attention to the box scores in the sports pages than they ever did to the war. Most American families didn’t send soldiers to war. The war had very little practical or immediate effect on most people. And yet, as a nation, we became tired of the struggle.”
Dr. Strasburg folded his hands on the table in front of him. “But consider the Mexican situation. At our urging, the Calderón administration went to war with the drug lords, and they fought courageously. But whereas we lost just over six thousand soldiers in our eleven-year War on Terror, the Mexican people have lost over fifty thousand people in about half that time. The number of Mexican dead is about equal to the number of soldiers we lost in combat in Vietnam.
“The only difference is, those Mexican casualties were mostly civilian casualties, and they all occurred in the hometowns and the city streets of Mexico itself, not off in some distant foreign land. If we are tired of our conflict, can you imagine how much more exhausted the Mexican people are? Of the stacks of human heads, the burned corpses in the streets, the bodies hanging from bridges?”
“I’m afraid Dr. Strasburg has a point,” Donovan said. “I’ve spoken to my counterparts off the record, and there is a great deal of fatigue setting in among the men and women who are actually fighting the drug war down there.”
“For all we know, there might be as many honest Mexican cops in witness protection with us here in the United States as there are in all of Mexico today,” Lancet added. “There have been chiefs of police who have fled into our consulates with their families with nothing but the clothes on their backs, scared to death of being assassinated. About thirty mayors have been assassinated since 2008; even more journalists. It’s a Wild West Show down there.”
“Though in the last few months, the violence has calmed down a little bit now that Barraza has backed off,” Molina said.
Madrigal raised a finger. “Violence is only part of the issue at stake. The Mexicans run annual trade deficits of around eight billion dollars a year, but we’re exporting between twenty and sixty billion dollars of drug money a year down there.”
“That’s a big spread in the numbers,” Myers said.
“The drug numbers are all over the place. It’s not as if you can audit anybody’s books. The best guess is that the drug trade accounts for three percent of their GDP. I’ve read one estimate that claims the cartels make three times as much profit as Mexico’s five hundred biggest corporations combined and employ half a million people.”
“What’s your point?” Myers said.
“I’m merely suggesting that there are some Mexicans not connected to the drug trade who are conflicted over the issue.”
“Sounds like you’re picking a fight you can’t win, Margaret,” Greyhill said. “I’d let this one go if I were you.” What he meant was if I were president.
“Sounds to me like you’re throwing in the towel, Robert.”
Greyhill’s eyes narrowed at the thinly veiled reference to his concession speech to Myers at the convention last year.
Myers turned to the others. “And you all are giving up, too. Is that what I’m hearing?”
Strasburg shook his heavy head. “Not at all, Madame President. We understand your desire fo
r justice and, in fact, share it. But consider Barraza’s situation. Imagine if he had a son who was killed by an Iraqi terrorist and he asked you to reinvade Iraq in order to get justice for his murdered son. How willing would we be to open that wound all over again? It’s a horribly unfair and hyperbolic comparison, I know, but my ridiculous question points to the anxiety the Barraza administration has regarding the cartels.”
“I agree with you, Dr. Strasburg. It is a ridiculous comparison. I’m not asking Barraza to start a war. I’m asking him to make an inquiry.”
“But to Castillo, that will seem like a declaration of war,” Madrigal said.
Myers stiffened. “All I know right now is that the Castillo boys are the prime suspects—the only suspects—in a heinous crime committed on American soil. I would think the Mexican government would be interested in solving such a crime, that is, if the Mexican government is still committed to the rule of law. I’m not looking for scapegoats or a vendetta. I’m looking for a little cooperation and I mean to have it. Am I clear on this?”
The room sat in chastised silence until Jeffers finally spoke up. “Yes. Perfectly clear.”
“Then call Eddleston and get him over here ASAP, and let’s get Ambassador Romero on the line. I want this handled with kid gloves—but I want it handled now. And I don’t want the press involved. No point in putting more pressure on Barraza. I want to give him every possible leeway to pursue the matter in a way that makes sense for him. But we’re going to get to the bottom of this Castillo thing, one way or another.”
Myers stood up. So did everyone else.
The meeting was over. Everybody filed out except Jeffers. When the room was clear, Jeffers asked, “Greyhill’s going to be a problem, isn’t he?”
“The vice president has decades of experience in foreign affairs, which I value greatly. I think a goodwill tour of our G-8 allies by the vice president would be greatly beneficial to the nation, don’t you?” Myers said.