Age of Blood

by Weston Ochse

  Even without the answers, Billings was able to garner full support from the CIA. Through SPG, she coordinated ground support through the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. One of their assets would be in contact—ex–Zetas cartel hit man turned U.S. counter-narcoterrorism operative. He was due to meet with them sometime later that morning. Holmes had arranged for them to stay at a hotel downtown, one used by Mexicans rather than moneyed tourists.

  Holmes was now certain, as was the rest of the team, including J.J., that Emily was alive. After all, why take so much effort to hide an abduction unless care was going to be made to keep the person alive. That there had been no ransom was worrisome. That someone tried to hide the fact she was even kidnapped was even more worrisome. Triple Six had to get to the bottom of this. Without any solid leads, their only option was to grab as many local bad guys as possible and interrogate them. Someone had to know something. Mexico’s subculture thrived on graft. Money had to pass from one hand to another for someone to have been able to get away with kidnapping in the area and it was Triple Six’s job to discover who it was.

  Hotel Boutique Casa Poblito on Hidalgo Avenue was their accommodation of choice. It was a square one-story hotel with a single entry and exit point with a gate that could be locked. Each room had a window air-conditioning unit. The center courtyard had a pool and a large cabana. It had twenty-four rooms, eighteen of which were rented until this morning. By noon, everyone would be out and Triple Six would have the place to themselves.

  Holmes also coordinated with an old friend, Major Navarre of the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales, or GAFE, which was the Mexican Special Forces. He didn’t require GAFE’s assistance, but he wanted his friend to know that they were in country and that they were conducting a covert operation, in the event local police or even federal police became involved. Navarre would create documentation that they were conducting a joint special-operations exercise, so if needed, the paperwork could be immediately produced. If it turned out they didn’t need the backup, then the documents would be destroyed. Plus it was just good planning to have a team of Mexican Special Forces on standby, even if you were SEAL Team 666.

  J.J. took them to a late breakfast, loudly announcing that his companions had been charter fishing with him and had caught their weight in dorado and crevalle. They ate chilaquiles and eggs, which were nothing more than eggs served over tortilla chips, in this case with chorizo, queso fresco, and black beans.

  After confirming that the hotel was available, they bag-dragged eight blocks and entered through the central door. Holmes passed a stack of money into the hands of the owner, and with one last glance, the owner hurried into the street. They had the hotel for three days, at which time they could extend their residency if needed. And the owner didn’t mind. After all, he’d been paid three times the rate on every room. A dump like this probably hadn’t been full in years, much less drawing the kind of customers who paid regularly.

  “Walker and Yank, clear the rooms,” Holmes commanded. Turning to Laws, he said, “Establish coms and check out the electronics.” To J.J. he handed a placard that read QUARANTINE in Spanish, and a padlock. “Seal the front, then check the businesses around here and find out who the cops are who patrol this area. We want to make friendly with them.” He passed over a smaller stack of Benjamins. “Let me know if you need more.”

  It didn’t take long to place the sign on the door, get a worried look from a bum nearby, and lock the gate. Then J.J. was bopping down the street, pretending to own the universe.

  Walker and Yank drew their SIG Sauer P229s and began room clearing per SOP. Entering simultaneously through each door, one low, one high, each of them covered a sector of the room to allow for greatest coverage of fire. They’d cleared two rooms when Walker was surprised to hear Holmes’s voice speaking to someone else outside.

  “You don’t have a last name?” Holmes demanded.

  Walker tapped Yank on the shoulder and both of them slid from the room. Holmes stood with his hands at his sides. To anyone else he might have appeared relaxed, but Walker recognized the tension in his boss. Holmes was addressing someone in the shade of the cabana near the pool in the central courtyard.

  “I have had many last names. Since one is as good as the other, if you wish me to have a last name, then choose for me.”

  “Or I just call you Ramon?”

  “This is good, too.”

  Walker peered around the corner. He saw a man seated in a chair beneath the cabana. He wore linen slacks and a linen jacket over a white shirt. The shoes on his feet were perforated to let air in. Gold dangled from his wrists and a large necklace hung around his neck. He appeared to be about fifty, had a solid head of hair, and was handsome in the way older Mexican men often seemed to be.

  But there was something else, too. Something different about this man that made Walker’s skin buzz. The other SEALs called it his supernatural early-warning radar. He’d called it a pain in the ass until he learned to control it. He still remembered the first time on his first mission, falling to the ground and doing the kicking chicken as a seizure completely took him over. It was one reason he’d been selected: his past history of being possessed by a Malaysian grave demon was reason to elevate him above all the other candidates. He’d since come to terms with his sensitivity and used it for the team’s benefit. So now that he felt the buzz, he had to wonder who—or what—was speaking to Holmes.

  He moved out in a combat crouch, training his pistol on the man. “Chief, step back.”

  Holmes did as he was told, taking several quick steps backward as he drew his own pistol. “What’s going on, Walker? You feel something?”

  “Yes, sir. Closer I get. Yank, to me,” Walker yelled.

  Yank appeared on the other side of the cabana, his pistol in a two-handed grip, his face a mask of serenity.

  Ramon hadn’t moved. He sat, acting as if three SEALs weren’t pointing their weapons at him. He turned to look at Walker.

  “So … you’ve been involved with such things before.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been around. So what is it? Are you demon or a man?”

  Ramon laughed. “I’ve been called both quite frequently of late. One man’s man is another man’s demon.”

  “I think you better explain yourself,” Holmes said, tightening his grip on his pistol. “Tell us what’s going on.”

  The former Zeta hit man smiled sadly, much as he probably did with his targets right before he murdered them, thought Walker.

  “Doesn’t a man have his privacy?”

  “We operate as a team. We have no privacy. We’re brothers.”

  “And if I tell you, then I’ll instantly be a brother,” Ramon said, snapping his fingers.

  “Well.” Holmes seemed to consider it. “Maybe a stepbrother.”

  “Once removed,” Laws added, coming up behind them.

  “But you need me. The embassy sent me.”

  Walker detected a strange tone in the man’s speech, as if he was really upset about not being brought into the fold but hiding it well.

  “You’d probably help us, but we’ll move on without you,” Holmes said.

  “And what happens to me then?” Ramon shifted his eyes toward where Yank had him covered.

  Holmes shrugged. “I guess that’s up to you.”

  It was a real Mexican standoff for almost a full minute. The silence in the courtyard was disrupted only by the sound of the pool filter, Walker shifting his feet to get a better line, and cars rumbling past outside. Finally the man in white held his hands out to his sides and slowly got to his feet.

  “I was a hit man for the Zetas cartel and could get at any target, regardless of where they were,” he began, making eye contact with each and every member of Triple Six. “No one could figure it out. They’d watch for me. They’d plan for me. On occasion I’d have the audacity to tell them I was coming. Once I even gave them the time.” He shook his head sharply. “Didn’t matter. Was nothing they could do. If the Zetas
wanted you dead and they called me in, it was a done deal.”

  “I thought you said the embassy sent you,” Laws noted.

  “Alas, I did my job too well. My former employers tried to get rid of me. I had to—how do you say it—change teams.”

  “How’d you do it?” Holmes asked. “I mean, you told that story for a reason. How’d you get away with killing so many people?”

  “Let me show you.” He held up his right hand. His lips peeled back slightly as he concentrated on it. The fingers grew long, talons sprung from the nails, and sand-colored hair shot forth from the skin.

  “Skinwalker,” Laws said.

  Ramon smiled.

  “Now I see why the cartel wanted you dead,” Holmes said.

  Ramon flexed his hand and it returned to human form. “Yes. A sad thing when you can’t trust those you work for.”

  “You said it before. The problem with being the best is who’s out there who can stop you?”

  “I would think you know that problem very well, Lieutenant Commander Holmes.” Ramon sat back down. “Can we begin now or is your man going to have another feeling?”

  For a second it looked like Holmes was going to carry the situation to the next step; then he dropped his weapon and shoved it into the waistband behind his back. “Nah. I think we’re ready to get to work.”

  The other SEALs followed Holmes’s lead. Walker felt a little relief, but not too much. He was still in the presence of a skinwalker, or what legends generally referred to as a werewolf.

  12

  HOTEL BOUTIQUE CASA POBLITO. AFTERNOON.

  As it turned out, Ramon was a gold mine of information. He’d been a one-man killing machine for the Zetas, responsible for more deaths than a Salvadoran hit squad. Working against the other cartels, the Zetas had tried to poise themselves on top of the power pyramid. Instead of fighting for territory, they fought for smuggling routes and constantly worked against other cartels.

  Ramon explained the structure. There were eight major cartels. The Gulf Cartel, the Beltrán Leyva Cartel, La Familia, the Sinaloa Cartel, the Juárez Cartel, the Tijuana Cartel, the Knights Templar, and Los Zetas.

  The Gulf Cartel, which controlled the Baja Peninsula, was one of the strongest in men, arms, and influence, until they began to fight among themselves. It was now broken into two factions, Los Metros and Los Rojos, each struggling to claim the territory it once had. In 1999, the Gulf Cartel was responsible for the formation of Los Zetas, hiring thirty-one GAFE soldiers as assassins; these soldiers turned several border towns into ghost towns, their violence and cruelty unmatched and unchecked. When the leader of the Gulf Cartel was captured in 2008, Los Zetas seized the opportunity to swell their ranks to more than three hundred former special operations soldiers, and thus became the dominant force in human and narcotics trafficking.

  La Familia was formed by members of the Gulf Cartel who splintered off to create an organization similar to the Zetas, in order to attack the Zetas and keep them away from the Gulf Cartel. What had initially appeared to be a parting of ways turned into a savvy reorganization. But in mid-2011 the Gulf Cartel was overcome by its own infighting, resulting in the Knights Templar, which had since flourished in the absence of La Familia. Knights Templar aligned itself with the Sinaloa Federation in an attempt to root out any surviving members of La Familia and prevent Los Zetas from expanding into the territory.

  The Sinaloan cartel was perhaps the largest of the big cartels. Because they had infiltrated the Mexican military and judiciary, many of their operations had been unopposed, especially in the valuable Texas money corridor. Additionally, instead of fighting the Zetas they formed alliances with them and jointly destroyed the Sonoran, Colima, and Milenio cartels.

  Both the Tijuana and Juárez cartels held only a fraction of the power they had enjoyed a decade earlier. While both still controlled the flow of drugs and humans through their cities, they were ignored by the other cartels, much as a person from the city would ignore someone from the country.

  The Beltrán Leyva Cartel was believed to have disbanded. But as late as 2005, the cartel had its tentacles into Mexico’s police, political, and judicial offices. They were even able to place operatives in Interpol offices, in a program to redirect the country’s counternarcotics efforts away from their cartel, and place the crosshairs firmly on the Gulf Cartel. The last of the four brothers who once ran the cartel, Héctor Beltrán Leyva, went into hiding. Both the U.S. and Mexico had a multimillion-dollar bounty for the man’s capture and arrest. But no one would ever be able to claim it, Ramon told them, since the disappearance was actually the result of him infiltrating Leyva’s Badiraguato compound and disposing of the drug lord in a method that was untraceable. Over the period of a week, Ramon ate him, leaving the bones, hair, and nails to bleach beneath the hard, unforgiving sun on the slopes of Cerro Algodones.

  After the information dump, Holmes ordered Laws, who’d reported that the hotel office had a serviceable computer with an average wireless connection, to contact SPG and have them form link analysis chains. They’d search for links in financial transactions, vehicle movements, personnel movements, as well as telephone and IP addresses. These methods had been used for decades, and resulted in uncovering culprits of seemingly unsolvable crimes, such as the Khobar Towers bombing.

  Holmes wanted SPG to follow whatever linkage they could from the hotel security camera back to the nearest cartel. Once they determined the linkage, they could, with information from the Mexican federal judiciary, determine which members of that cartel were in the area. Holmes also wanted more information on Ramon, and asked that SPG do a deep dive to provide a comprehensive report. Finally, Holmes asked that Laws get a list of all current issues before the Sissy, including those brought forward from previous sessions.

  Holmes approached the newest SEAL and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Yank, I want you to patrol. Keep the integrity of this building together. I don’t want a bunch of beegees sneaking up on us.”

  Just then J.J. returned. When he saw Ramon, he asked, “This the guy?”

  “Yeah, this is the guy.” Holmes turned to Ramon. “Who controls this area?”

  “If you mean southern Baja, then the answer is no one. The answer is also everyone. The area has been in dispute. Just when someone establishes a foothold, the other cartels and the judicial system gang up on them.”

  “Are there any Zetas around?”

  “I’m sure there are.”

  “What about Gulf Cartel or Knights Templar?”

  “Probably some of them, too.”

  “I assume they’d all be tied into the local politics and businesses.”

  Ramon nodded. “I’d assume the same.”

  “Okay, here’s what I want: Ramon, I’d like you to find the local Zeta facilitator and bring him in. Yank and I will go after the Gulf Cartel operative, and J.J. and Walker will go after the Knights Templar.”

  “Uh, boss,” Walker said, “one problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We don’t know where they are.”

  Holmes smiled broadly. “We don’t have to.” He pointed at J.J. and Ramon with both hands. “They can tell us.”

  J.J. smiled awkwardly. “Wait a minute. What are you saying, Sam?”

  “Don’t try and tell me you’ve been operating a charter without having paid, promised, or worked for one or all of the cartels.”

  “But that would be cooperating with a criminal organization. I’d lose my clearance if I’d done such a thing.”

  “Stow it,” Holmes said. “Save it for the polygraphers. I know what you have to do to survive. It’s one of the reasons we’re using you. Do you think we need an overweight, out-of-shape former SEAL to back us up, or do you maybe think we need your boat and your knowledge of the area?”

  J.J. looked hurt. “I’m not overweight.”

  Holmes gave him a disbelieving eye. “So?”

  “I know the Zetas here,” Ramon said. “Juan Carlos is the
man you’re looking for.”

  Holmes turned to Ramon. “Does he know you?”

  “By reputation.”

  “Good, then when you go to bring him in he won’t say much.”

  Ramon smiled. “He won’t say nothing at all. I assure you.”

  “Not so fast. We want him to talk when he gets here, so let’s not do anything irreversible.”

  Ramon nodded.

  Holmes turned to J.J. “So? Memory any better?”

  “I know a guy who belongs to the Gulf Cartel. He claims to be connected to everyone.”

  “Excellent. Then you and Walker go bring him in. And if he knows the location of a Templar, bring the Templar along as well.”

  “Alive?”

  “Please.” Holmes turned to Walker. “And Jack,” he said, with a rare use of his first name.

  “Sir?”

  “You’re in charge. Make sure you guys don’t get into any situation you shouldn’t. Know what I mean?”

  Jack knew exactly what his boss meant. He’d almost gotten the team killed several times because of his inability to restrain his curiosity and remain in position. Curiosity might have killed the cat, but it could never be the death of a SEAL.

  13

  CABO SAN LUCAS. AFTERNOON.

  They needed a car. While they could walk or take a taxi to Hotel Finisterra, bringing back a hostage in the same taxi might prove to be a little distracting, if not straight-up problematic. So J.J. made a call. Soon a thirty-year-old woman with flaming red hair, enough blue eye shadow for three people, and a muffin top that threatened the fabric of her pants dropped off a four-door gray and brown beater that had been a Toyota Corolla about a thousand years ago. J.J. kissed her and promised her something in Spanish that made her blush. She watched them leave with heavy lids, probably already imagining the benefits she would reap for her help.