Drone

by Mike Maden

  * * *

  Udi called Pearce with the news, hoping that the kill order would take effect when the helicopter crossed into international waters. Every other team had killed their respective targets. He and Tamar wanted their shot, too.

  “Wait until they are at least one hundred kilometers out” was all Pearce said.

  “You got it, boss!” Udi beamed.

  Thanks to Dr. Rao and the mosquito drones, the GPS implant in Ulises’s body still functioned perfectly, drawing energy from the static electricity he generated. Ulises traveled by car to Ribas’s private heliport at Simón Bolívar International. Moments later, a big ugly Russian Mi-35 Hind E helicopter landed. The airport was near the water, so Udi and Tamar repositioned their yacht a quarter mile off the coast, out of the flight path of commercial aircraft. Fortunately, there weren’t any Venezuelan Coast Guard patrol boats in the area so they could keep their surveillance gear up and running.

  Tamar’s camera recorded seven Venezuelan commandos in combat fatigues exiting the helicopter. The unit commander was a sergeant according to his insignia. He saluted Ulises, then shook his hand with a curt smile.

  Ulises turned and bear-hugged Ribas, then he boarded the chopper after the commandos had loaded back in. The door slammed shut, and the rotors cycled up. The big Hind lifted off the tarmac and swung lazily toward the ocean. Ribas stood below, waving good-bye until the chopper cleared land.

  Udi stood on the aft deck of the yacht and watched the helicopter roar overhead through a pair of mil-spec binoculars while Tamar kept the video camera locked on it from inside the cabin. They obviously didn’t have the opportunity to place any surveillance equipment on board the military helicopter on such short notice, so they couldn’t hear or see what was going on inside.

  “We shouldn’t follow them immediately,” Udi suggested. “No point in getting too close and alerting them. We have plenty of range.”

  “I agree. But you’ll have to drive the boat.”

  “Why?” Udi asked.

  Tamar grinned. “Because it’s my turn to shoot the Stinger.” She kept the camera focused on the massive helo as it sped north out to sea. Udi started the engine and turned the yacht in the same direction as the helicopter, which had climbed to a thousand feet. A moment later, the Hind froze in space.

  “Tamar—”

  “I’m getting it, love,” she shouted from inside. Pearce needed everything recorded to video.

  Tamar watched the helicopter door slide open on the video monitor. “What are they doing?”

  A couple of seconds later, Ulises’s body tumbled out, falling like a bag of wet cement. Tamar followed his unmistakable corpse all the way down with the camera until it splashed. Udi focused his binoculars at the spot where Ulises’s body had hit. No movement in the water.

  Udi glanced back up at the helicopter. It rotated 180 degrees on a dime, then roared away back toward the airport. Tamar followed it with her camera as it flew over the airport and then climbed over the mountains behind the city on a direct course for Caracas.

  “Why?” Tamar asked.

  “Why not? With his father dead, he became a liability.”

  “And the idiot walked right into it.”

  “That’s why Ribas had the armed escort. Just in case he came to his senses.”

  Tamar radioed in to Pearce as Udi throttled up and sped toward the splashdown. He knew Pearce would want a DNA sample just to be sure.

  JULY

  25

  Los Pinos, Mexico D.F.

  “What do you mean Castillo’s dead?”

  “Castillo, his son Ulises, his three brothers. All of them.” Hernán sliced his throat with his thumb.

  “The Americans?”

  “Who else?”

  Antonio fell back into his ornately carved presidential chair, despondent. “If it weren’t for César Castillo, I wouldn’t be president.”

  The Barrazas had cut to the front of the political line with cartel muscle and money. Hernán had engineered it all. He knew that many political dynasties had been midwifed by crime syndicates. The Triads in communist China, even the Kennedys and the mob. And God only knew if the rumors about Putin and the Russian mafia were true.

  Hernán shuffled over to the credenza and poured himself a whiskey. He held up the bottle and glass to his brother, a silent offer of a drink. But Antonio waved him off. Hernán shrugged and tossed back the glass, then poured himself another.

  “You needed Castillo to win the office. You don’t need him to keep it,” Hernán said. “Now that he’s gone, there will be a ‘peace dividend’ for you and Mexico.” He tossed back his second.

  “Maybe it was the Bravos who finally took him out,” Antonio said. “Maybe we’ve been backing the wrong horse the whole time.”

  Hernán poured himself a third glass, then another for his brother. He picked them up and carried them to the president’s desk.

  “Americans? Bravos? It doesn’t matter who took Castillo out. The Bravos are in control now, either way. And you are still the president of Mexico. Sounds like a natural alliance to me.” He handed his brother the whiskey glass, then clinked his glass against his brother’s.

  “Here’s to the end of the War on Drugs, and to the new peace for Mexico. Salut.”

  “Salut,” Antonio said, halfheartedly. They both drank.

  Antonio leaned forward. “Why do you think there will be a peace now? Won’t the Bravos come after us?”

  “Why should they, if we leave them alone? Accommodations can be made, just like we had with the Castillo Syndicate.”

  “With the Americans still breathing down our necks? We can’t suddenly stop enforcing all of our drug agreements with them.”

  “We can put pressure on the little guys on the margins who aren’t falling in line with Bravo yet. Break up a few of their shipments. The Americans won’t know the difference, but Bravo will appreciate it. He won’t mess with us if we don’t mess with him. Still…” Hernán frowned with concern.

  “What?”

  “You might want to give Bravo something more. A token of friendship. An offering.”

  “Like what?”

  “Cruzalta and his Marinas have been harassing the Bravos for a long time. Pull all of their operations off of the east coast away from Bravo territory and let them go chase Chinese smugglers along Baja. And sack Cruzalta. He needs to retire anyway. That should make Bravo happy.”

  “How do you know all of these things?” Antonio was genuinely curious.

  “It’s my job to know them. I’ve already set up a phone call with Victor Bravo to see if we can work out some sort of an equitable arrangement. With your permission, of course.”

  “Yes, of course. As you think best.” He drained his glass. “How about another round?”

  Hernán nodded and picked up his brother’s glass to fetch a refill, adding, “And I have one more idea.”

  Chichén Itzá, Mexico

  Ali trudged up the steps of the Temple of Warriors. There seemed to be no end to the climb beneath the searing sky. He had read that the more famous Pyramid of Kukulkan had 365 steps cut out of the stone, one for each day of the year. But he had no idea how many steps this one had and he’d lost count. In the gross humidity of the day, it felt like it was taking a whole year to make the climb to the top. With each step he uttered silent prayers of protection to Allah against the foreign djinn he was certain inhabited this pagan shrine.

  Ali was surrounded by a casual but nevertheless armed escort of Bravo’s most loyal sicarios, all of them former military men—defectors, mostly, from Mexican, Guatemalan, and Salvadoran units—who had swarmed to Victor Bravo’s organization a dozen years ago at the prospect of untold wealth. And they were loyal, Ali noted. In fact, more than loyal. Devoted to the man was more like it. Like religious disciples. Greed may have first drawn them to him, but Bravo’s revolutionary charisma was what kept them bound to him. Bravo valued them highly, but they lacked actual combat experience against Wester
n armies. The kind Ali had in spades.

  Victor Bravo was a few steps above Ali, cresting the top of the temple mount first. None of the tourists or guards had to be told to stay clear of this group of terrifying men, not even the dim-witted gringos fresh off of the cruise-liner buses swarming the compound below. As a precaution, Bravo closed the temple to tourists that day.

  When Ali and Bravo’s men reached the top, the escort fanned out in a loose semicircle. The actual temple on top of the pyramid stood behind them. The black shade beneath its stone roof looked cool and inviting, but Ali shuddered. He imagined himself as a captured warrior standing in this very spot five hundred years ago, staring into that same temple mouth, soon to be led to slaughter on the reclining Chac-Mool idol looming in the dark like a demon from hell.

  “Do you know why I brought you up here?” Victor asked. He was staring out over the compound through a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses. Today he wore his typical uniform: black shirt, black jeans, black cowboy boots with silver tips, and a giant silver belt buckle, topped off with a blazingly white straw cowboy hat, fresh out of the box.

  All in all, though, he was modestly dressed for a man of his position. Most narcotraficantes wasted money on the trappings of wealth—expensive clothes, jewelry, palatial homes. Not Bravo. Most of his wealth went to his people. He’d built and maintained dozens of private schools, orphanages, and health clinics all over Mexico.

  Bravo had once confided to Ali that he had modeled his organization along Hezbollah lines: a military faction to fight his enemies and a humanitarian faction to win the hearts of his people, whom he genuinely cared for. It was one of the many reasons Ali had secretly allied with Bravo even when he was supposedly working for Castillo.

  “No, Señor Bravo. Why have you brought me here?”

  Victor wiped his long, dripping face with a handkerchief. He was mostly indio, shorter and darker than the Mexicans up north, with no facial hair. Ali wasn’t sure how old Bravo was. Forties? Fifties? Sixties? No wrinkles in his mahogany-colored flesh or silver strands of hair betrayed his age. He wore his thick black hair long and tucked behind his ears. His melodic Spanish accent was definitely Yucatecan.

  “This is the place of my people. Warriors, scientists, poets. We formed a great empire on this continent. We studied the stars, conquered our enemies, contemplated zero.”

  Ali understood his pride. He was the son of a great world empire, too, but one far more vast and advanced than anything the Mayans had accomplished, and a thousand years older than the one that had mysteriously vanished from the jungle surrounding them. Iran now stood on the doorstep of greatness again, thanks to its nuclear program. Only the Great Satan stood in their way.

  “This place is, indeed, the seventh wonder of the world.”

  “You are truly a religious man, Ali?”

  “I am an imperfect servant of the Most High, yes.”

  “Then you understand me when I say that God has given me a mission and I will fulfill it. You have a mission, too, and you have already fulfilled it by helping me get rid of Castillo and his brood of thieves.”

  “I am a humble soldier and I obey my orders, nothing more, jefe. The master does not thank the slave for doing his work.” Ali had said the same thing to César, of course.

  “You may be a lot of things, but you are no slave. You set up Castillo’s idiot sons on the El Paso hit and you engineered his family’s slaughter by the Americans. You’re either a magician or a genius, but either way, you’ve handed me Mexico on a sliver platter.”

  Bravo snapped his fingers and one of his guards approached with a backpack. “Most of the surviving Castillo captains have already started calling me jefe,” Bravo said.

  “Do you trust them?” Ali asked.

  “I trust their fear.”

  “And Barraza?”

  Bravo chuckled. “I spoke with his brother last night. Are you sure you aren’t a white wizard?”

  Ali shook his head. “No, jefe. I am neither a jaguar nor a prophet. Only humble flesh and blood, like you.” Ali had provided all of the ELINT security for Bravo’s organization, including his encrypted cell phones. However, Ali’s technicians had put backdoors on all of Bravo’s equipment, so Ali was privy to all of Bravo’s communications. He had listened to the conversation with Hernán just an hour ago.

  Bravo reached into the backpack and pulled out a black lacquered wooden box, then opened it. There was a pistol inside, nestled in crushed blue velvet. A .45 caliber 1911 Colt semiauto. It was solid gold with a mother-of-pearl handle. He pulled it out.

  Ali’s eyes narrowed. Maybe today he was going to be a sacrifice after all. He calculated strike points on Bravo first, then on the nearest bodyguard. If he could secure the guard’s weapon—

  Bravo turned the pistol in his hand and held the butt out toward Ali. He smiled. “Take it. It’s yours.”

  Ali frowned. Was this a trick?

  He picked up the gun. It was much heavier than an ordinary one made of steel. He clicked the magazine release. The magazine was gold-plated, too. He nicked the top bullet with his thumbnail. The bullets were solid gold, too.

  “It belonged to Saddam Hussein. I won’t tell you how I acquired it, or how much it cost, because it is far less valuable to me than our friendship.” Bravo had taken the credit for the destruction of the Castillo Syndicate, and his reputation in the international underworld as an omnipotent force in Mexico had been sealed thanks to the Iranian’s scheme.

  Ali gazed at the weapon in wonder. His uncles had died as young men in the catastrophic war with Iraq thirty years ago. His whole family cheered the day the filthy Sunni dictator was hanged by his own people, and they laughed with pride when they read that he had cursed his Iraqi executioners by calling them “Persians.”

  And now I hold the bastard’s golden gun in my hands. Ali was genuinely touched.

  “I am honored and humbled by this lavish gift, Señor Bravo.”

  “It is offered with my gratitude for the work you have done.”

  “But there is still much more to be done. Your newest recruits are being trained even as we speak.”

  “How are they doing?”

  “Very well. I have my best men preparing them. I’ll be returning to the camp soon to oversee the last three weeks of their training.”

  “Excellent. Some of Castillo’s Maras up north are still holding out. I need the new men to put them down like the crazed dogs they are. A final assault and we will consolidate our position in Mexico. Our men, your guns.”

  “A match made in heaven, as the Americans like to say,” Ali said. “And what about Castillo’s distribution network in the United States? We should take them out as soon as possible.”

  Bravo draped an arm around Ali’s shoulder. “That is the other thing I wanted to talk to you about. This Castillo thing…”

  “What about it?”

  “His whole family wiped out. And for what? Because he killed the wrong kids. Really, just one wrong kid if we’re going to be honest about it.”

  “What’s your point, jefe?”

  “Do you have a wife? Kids?”

  “Yes. Two wives and seven sons.” Ali didn’t think his three daughters were worth mentioning.

  Bravo laughed. “Seven sons? That’s good. So you understand. I don’t want anything to happen to my children. Or to me.” Bravo steered him toward the temple.

  “You are afraid of Myers? A woman?” Ali was incredulous. “We led her around by the nose. Why worry about a worthless one like that?”

  “It’s not her I’m worried about. It’s her guns. Her planes without pilots. You’ve heard the rumors.”

  Ali stopped and smiled. “You do not have to be afraid of such things, my friend. I have fought the Americans and their Predator drones before. Do you know why Americans fight with their robots? It is because they are afraid to fight and die like men. That is why they would not send their soldiers in to deal with Castillo.”

  Ali was amazed at how
much fear these Mexicans had of the effeminate Americans. First he had to bolster Castillo’s courage, and now Bravo’s.

  Bravo shook his head. “You have a short memory, amigo. Remember the Gulf War? Remember the videos? ‘Shock and awe.’ The Americans destroyed Saddam’s army in a few weeks. You fought the Iraqis for almost eight years and couldn’t beat them. How many men did you lose?”

  “A million martyrs, counting wounded.”

  “You see? And Hussein had only primitive Soviet equipment for you to fight against. You can’t defeat the Americans, Ali. Nobody can. Their technology is too good.”

  “The Taliban have a saying. ‘The Americans have the watches, we have the time.’ It has been over eleven years since the Americans invaded Afghanistan. The infidels have their aircraft carriers and supersonic fighters, while the poor Taliban fighters have only their rifles and their guts. The Americans are quitting Afghanistan just like the Russians did, and the Taliban remain. The Great Satan has the will to kill, but not to fight.”

  “But the Americans defeated Hussein. He had thousands of tanks and hundreds of thousands of soldiers.”

  “They only defeated Saddam because he was stupid. He left his tanks and his men in the desert for weeks and let the Americans bomb them continuously. Many strategic and tactical mistakes were made by that Ba’athist fool, and the Americans exploited those mistakes to the fullest. Do you not see? The Americans could never have fought an all-out war with Iraq for eight years, but we did. Do not let Myers’s actions convince you she is strong when, in fact, she is acting from a position of weakness. She uses drones because she is afraid to fight another real war with soldiers. That should tell you everything you need to know about the Americans.”

  The ambient air temperature dropped as they entered the cool of the temple.

  “Much better in here, isn’t it?” Victor asked. He pulled off his sunglasses. So did Ali.

  “Yes.” Ali’s eyes adjusted to the dark. He saw the reclining stone image of the Chac-Mool lounging in the shadows. The idol’s lifeless eyes chilled him to the bone.