by Weston Ochse
“The deputy director will see you now,” said the prim woman at the reception desk.
Billings stood, smiled a thanks, then strode to the executive door. It was opened before she got to it by an assistant, who beckoned her in.
“Ms. Billings,” the deputy director said, standing behind an impressive oak desk. The wood was burled like a tiger’s eye and glistened in the fluorescent light of the room. “Please come in.”
McKinney was unimpressive to look at. Middling height, slightly overweight, balding and with a weak chin, he might have been more at home as the night manager of a grocery store … which is what made him perfect for his job at the agency. Too many people had made assumptions about his appearance and his intellect and found themselves at a severe disadvantage because of it.
His suit was Savile Row, navy blue. He wore a Yale tie. He stepped out from behind his desk and offered a manicured hand. “So happy you could see me at such an early hour.”
“So glad to be seen,” she said curtly. “It’s my understanding you have something you wish to say.”
“Ready to get to the point, I see.” He gestured to the other man in the room. “May I introduce Mr. Christopher Golden. Mr. Golden directs our many special projects groups, including the one we’ve provided to directly support your special unit on Coronado.”
“Triple Six,” she said. “Your SPG has provided good service.” She saw no reason not to give credit where it was due.
Golden nodded, but didn’t say much. He didn’t even step forward to accept her proffered hand. Instead, he had a pained look in his eyes. Where Deputy Director McKinney glistened with refinement, Golden seemed a pale reflection. Although physically the men could have been cousins, Golden wore an old wool suit that had been dry-cleaned so many times the fused wool gleamed through. His nondescript tie was of an uncertain age and the collar of his white shirt had long ago broken down and lost form. The deputy director was a manager. Golden was an intellectual.
Billings pulled her hand back and smiled softly. Golden didn’t want at all to be here. She wondered if he wasn’t being offered as a sacrificial scapegoat. She’d be ready for it if that was going to be their strategy.
“Please, sit,” McKinney said. He waited for Billings to do so, and then he sat himself. “Would you like some coffee? I’ve taken the liberty of having some made.”
As if on cue, the door opened and the prim woman at the front desk came in carrying a silver service. She placed it on a table to the right of the desk that seemed positioned there for just that purpose; then she left.
Billings let McKinney pour a coffee for her and himself, then waited until both of them had a moment to taste their own. She knew the silence was an intimidation device. She was to fill it either with her own chatter, or by looking at the awards and decorations of a man who’d served the agency for more than thirty years. Presidential letters and congressional awards festooned walls among African spears and World War II Nazi memorabilia.
She gave the silence three minutes, then snapped it.
“I understand you have some information about the disappearance of Senator Withers’s daughter. I also understand that you’ve known about the possibility far longer than any of us.”
“To the point.” McKinney smiled, but it was more of a grimace.
“So tell me the story. Might as well start with ‘once upon a time,’ because if it doesn’t end with ‘and they lived happily ever after,’ someone is going to lose their job.” She glanced at Golden. “Maybe multiple someones.”
McKinney steepled his hands and leveled his gaze on her. Although he was the deputy director of operations for the CIA and she was merely a staffer for a senate committee, she held the power of the purse in her hands. Not that she could vote or sit in any of the meetings, but the senator counted on her for advice and had not taken it on only one previous occasion, much to his own chagrin.
“Once upon a time there was a cartel in Mexico who wanted to change the world,” McKinney began. “This is the beginning. Golden, please tell Ms. Billings the rest of the story.”.
Golden, who’d refrained from coffee, began to pace. Billings had to turn in her seat to watch him.
“So here’s what we know. Emily Withers has been under surveillance on five occasions by unknown members of Los Zetas. The last three of these occasions were during her previous visits to Cabo San Lucas.”
He paused here for Billings to take it in, then continued.
“On four of the occasions, we had agents conducting countersurveillance and providing overwatch for the senator’s daughter.”
“And on the fifth?” Billings asked.
“Our agent went missing.”
“When?”
“When what?” Golden asked.
“I asked you when you found out the agent went missing,” she said in a voice that could cut ice.
Golden exchanged a look with McKinney, who nodded, then stared out his fifth-floor window at the Potomac.
“Before Emily Withers arrived in Mexico.”
“And you didn’t send anyone else?”
Golden murmured something.
“What was that?” she asked.
“We didn’t think it was necessary.”
Billings turned toward McKinney and repeated the words. “‘We didn’t think it was necessary.’ I see.”
McKinney turned away from the window and back to her. “There’s something else.”
Billings smiled sweetly. “Isn’t there always?”
Golden sighed as he wrung his hands. Finally he spoke. “Through an electronic intercept of Zetas cartel data, then by sifting through millions of conversations and information pulls, we found reference to a program, not unlike that which Hitler pulled, partnering with the Thule Society and searching for powerful supernatural entities and weapons that would help them create their own ideal world order. It appears that the Zetas cartel, in an attempt to pull themselves out of the quagmire of cartel-on-cartel violence, has devised a plan to reinstate old Aztec rule, and with that, a return of the old gods.”
He let the words hang in the air for a few moments. To anyone else but the deputy director and the administrator, such an assertion might seem criminally negligent, if not insane. But they’d heard and seen enough to know that the threats posed by the universe toward freedom were not only those made by man.
“One more thing,” Golden said, shifting his gaze momentarily toward McKinney.
“Another one still?” Billings remarked.
Golden nodded. “You might remember the tattooed skin suits your men found first in San Francisco and then Imperial Beach. The man in Myanmar used the suits to channel the spirit of a Chinese demon. The nature of the suit, being made from the skin of many, plus the very nature of the tattoos, created a tool with which the man could wield the power of but not be killed by the creature he was trying to channel.”
“One of the suits went missing,” she said.
“We traced it to the Zetas.”
“You traced it to the Zetas,” Billings repeated in a monotone. She let it sink in for a moment, then asked, “Did you not make the connection between the suit and the Zetas’ desire to harness the old gods?”
Golden frowned and seemed put out to have to explain himself. “The two things weren’t connected,” he said tightly.
“Just like Emily Withers isn’t connected.”
Golden frowned and shook his head. “We see no connection at all.”
Billings glanced at McKinney before she spoke. “And how did you come to that determination? Magic 8-Ball? Rock-paper-scissors? The flip of a coin?”
The older man sputtered and fluttered his hands. He looked to his boss, but Billings had been right. The man was a sacrificial lamb.
“Answer her, Chris.”
The director of Special Projects Groups wanted nothing more than to not answer. It was clear that he believed that the whole process was beyond him. Still, he reluctantly answered. “There is no conne
ction.”
Billings drilled in. “Are you telling me that no one in any of your special projects groups believed there might be a connection?”
“There were some,” he said with exasperation. “But that’s just coincidence. We’re working on pattern analysis that—”
“What was that you said?” Billings placed the saucer and coffee cup on the edge of the deputy director’s expensive desk. She held up a finger. “Did you say coincidence?”
McKinney’s expression became pained and he stared into the depths of the paperwork on his desk.
“Did you say coincidence?” she asked again. “Like when a man gets sniper training by the Soviets and then assassinates an American president? That kind of coincidence? Or like the coincidence where several groups of Arab-speaking flight students are learning how to take off but not how to land? That kind of coincidence?”
“Don’t you dare!” Golden said, his fists shaking. “That was the FBI—on both occasions.”
Billing stood. “Don’t you dare, Mr. Golden. Don’t pretend you didn’t have prior information regarding each of those events. Perhaps the FBI is as much a scapegoat as you are. Let me say this one time. When we discuss supernatural objects and the desire for someone to use something to become greater than they have any right to be, we do not use the word coincidence. One man’s coincidence is a Triple Six mission.”
She turned to McKinney and held her hands together in front of her as ladylike as she could. “This is what’s going to happen. The CIA is going to render every possible assistance necessary. Everything we need you will provide. Aircraft. Satellites. Assets. Recruited agents. Everything. You will send an SPG for direct support. Wherever the mission is, I want the SPG there on hand, regardless.”
Golden sputtered again, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at the deputy director.
“Now,” she said. “Who will be my point of contact?”
“Chris, assign a POC for Ms. Billings.”
Golden’s outrage was obvious. After all, she’d stepped into his analytical universe and bitch-slapped him.
“Chris,” McKinney repeated himself. “Who is going to be Ms. Billings’s POC?”
“Jennifer Costello. Her team will be available to you. We’ll let her know she has all the assets at your disposal.”
“My team is heading into Alamos, Mexico. Do you have a safe house there? Assets? As in recruited agents?”
“We’re getting into some pretty sensitive operational activity, Ms. Billings.” McKinney delivered the statement with a smile.
She returned the smile. “I’ll let Senator Withers know you’ve decided not to provide what is necessary to save his daughter.”
His smile fell. “I see how this is.”
“We also want the freedom to move in Mexico. Please see that this is coordinated. Contact whomever you need to within the Mexican government. Cash in whatever chits you need.”
His smile fell even further.
“I have every confidence in you, Deputy Director. As does the senator. When he gets his daughter back safe and sound you’ll be one of the ones to whom he will demonstrate his goodwill. If things turn out to be unfortunate, well, then I’m sure he’ll make sure you’re taken care of as well. Thank you for your time.”
The trick to walking out of a room was to never look back, no matter how badly she wanted to see the looks on their faces. The only face she saw was that of the prim secretary, who gave her a look filled with secret approval.
24
MINAS NUEVAS, MEXICO. ABANDONED MINE. MORNING.
The Pave Low landed at an abandoned mine northwest of Alamos. They didn’t want to land inside or near the city. The presence of the military helicopter might spook whoever it was who held Emily Withers.
They had three cars waiting for them when they arrived. Each one had been a magnificent piece of Detroit machinery when it was built in the 1970s. But cartel wars, the high Mexican desert, and the complete absence of car washes had transformed the three Cutlass Supremes into studies in Bondo, baling wire, and the inventiveness of the needy.
Triple Six split off and prepared their weapons. Entering the city, they didn’t know if they would be going in hot or not. Their MBITRs were working, which wasn’t necessarily the norm. The systems were made for intrateam communications, and there were some things the SEALs did that they had trouble surviving. Like a Low Altitude/Low Opening (LALO) night jump into a Myanmar rain forest and the predictable ricocheting off of trees.
All the HK416s and SIGs were in good working order, although Yank wished he had more firing pins in the event he had to make field repairs. Only Yank and Walker had body armor, which wasn’t as Holmes would have liked. The good news was that their resupply was on the way. Billings had been given carte blanche, so the expectations were high. She’d also arranged for a safe house and access to agency assets. Holmes wasn’t sure what she’d said to get this sort of support, but he wished he’d been in the room.
Major Navarre and one of his men left in one of the cars and headed into Alamos to reconnoiter. They’d get them to the safe house, but would have to pull back after that.
After they left, Holmes brought the men together and asked Ramon and J.J. to join them. They gathered around an abandoned VW Beetle that had been opened like a tin can and used for a fire pit.
“YaYa and Hoover will be joining us soon. Nice to have the team complete,” he began. “Not sure how Hoover will deal with Ramon, but we’ll have to be prepared.”
“Hoover?” Ramon asked.
While the team had been at the Naval Special Warfare Training Center in New Orleans, Hoover had undergone his yearly checkup at the military dog hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. They hadn’t seen Hoover in two weeks. Holmes couldn’t help but note how getting him back felt right.
“Our dog,” Walker said. “A Belgian Malinois.”
“You have a dog?”
“We’ve had a dog on the team for more than two hundred years. It’s something we do,” Holmes said.
“Glad to see YaYa, too,” Laws added. “Boy hasn’t been the same since Myanmar.”
Holmes nodded. “It was his first mission. Sometimes it takes a while to work things out.”
Everyone turned to Yank.
“What’s everyone looking at me for?”
Laws and Walker laughed. Each had been the FNG at one time or another and remembered the uncertainty of their first mission.
“We’ve also been given an agency contact and a safe house,” Holmes said.
“Now that’s something new,” Laws said. “Not often the agency will give us the results of their hard work at espionage.”
“Who owns the safe house?” J.J. asked.
“Some organization called the Order of the Sacred Knights of the Virgin of Valvanera.” Holmes turned to Ramon. “Have you heard of them?”
Ramon laughed out loud. “The Knights? Your agency has them as your safe house?” He shook his head.
“What’s wrong with them?” Laws asked.
“Nothing I suppose, if you don’t mind their ideas of grandeur. Each of them is like a Don Quixote.”
“Can they be trusted?” Holmes asked, showing uncertainty at what he was hearing about the Knights.
“Can a crazy man be trusted?” Ramon shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“What else do you know about the Knights?” Holmes asked.
“It’s a monastic order created to protect the Virgin in Mexico. Much like yourselves, I suppose, except they don’t work for a country, but rather an idea.”
“When you say the virgin, do you mean the Virgin Mary?” Yank asked.
“Yes and no,” Laws answered. “The Virgin in Mexico is a little different. There’s an incredible native influence on the belief of the Christian Mary. Take the Virgin de Guadalupe, for instance, or Our Lady of Guadalupe.”
“Is that the one they see on walls and in toast?” Walker asked.
Laws nodded. “It’s what you call a Mar
ian apparition, which is an appearance of the Virgin Mary. Now this goes all the way back to Cortez, who was a native of Extremadura, Spain, which is the original home of Our Lady of Guadalupe. He had a basilica built on Tepeyac Hill, outside of what is now Mexico City, but what was then Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztecs. The importance of the location is that the basilica was built on the Aztec temple worshipping the goddess Tonantzin, which early Spanish priests used to convince the Aztecs that the two were one and the same.”
“Another Aztec reference,” Walker said. “There seem to be a lot of them.”
“You’re right,” Laws nodded. “The Virgin of Guadalupe as she exists in Mexican culture is a syncretic icon. If you worship one, you’re worshipping them both. We’re also two days away from the Fiesta de Nuestra Señora de la Balvanera. More than ten thousand worshippers will descend on the city in devotion of the Virgin. Incidentally, Balvanera is a colloquialization of Valvanera. For the last seven days there’s been a growing procession going back and forth between Aduana and Alamos, carrying an image of the Virgin with them.”
“My guess is that the Knights are going to be involved in that,” Yank said.
“So amidst the celebration and the extra ten thousand people we’re supposed to find the senator’s daughter?” J.J. asked. “They sure don’t make it easy.”
“Might not be as hard to find as you think,” Ramon said. “If the Knights are tied into the town, they’ll know where leprosos could be. It’s all a matter of understanding the lay of the land. So yes,” he said grudgingly, “maybe having the Knights on our side is a good idea.”
“So it’s our side now,” Laws said.
“As long as we don’t go back up in any fucking helicopters, yes!”
25
ALAMOS, MEXICO. KNIGHTS’ CASTLE. AFTERNOON.
The Knights called a three-hundred-year-old shoe factory home. Although it hadn’t manufactured shoes since Pancho Villa rode a horse, it was still structurally sound and had been retrofitted with enough rooms to house the members of the monastic order and their guests, when they had them.