by Brad Taylor
The man the sicario had boiled was one such target. Two days ago, he’d been a valued member of Los Zetas. Yesterday, he had become a target, simply because his boss, El Comandante, had heard he might be turning informant.
The sicario was sure El Comandante was crazy. He was like a dog that had been whipped, beaten, and thrown into fights to the death for so long he had lost all sense of what constituted reality. Sooner or later, it would be the sicario’s turn. Of that he was absolutely positive. The only reason it hadn’t happened yet was because he had never once shown anything but loyalty and had never indicated an interest in greater riches or power.
That, and because the sicario had been Los Zetas far longer than anyone else. Longer even than El Comandante. He was one of the few members of Los Zetas still alive from when they were the pipe swingers for the Gulf cartel. One of the original sicarios—and that fact, along with his reputation for brutality, held some importance.
He wondered if he himself was crazy. He thought he could discern it in others but wasn’t sure about himself. He didn’t believe he was, but in his heart he couldn’t see how anyone who executed such heinous deeds couldn’t be. He should have been eaten up with remorse or fearful of the afterlife. But he wasn’t. The acts, like the one earlier today, never bothered him. Didn’t that make him loco?
There was only one action that haunted him. Made him worry about where he would spend eternity. During the latter stages of the Guatemalan civil war, his Kaibil unit had been sent to “pacify” a village. They had slaughtered every man, woman, and child. After everything he had done since in the name of Los Zetas, this was the one event that haunted his dreams. Made him sweat when the memories surfaced. The campesinos running left and right like rabbits. The machetes falling. The blood. The stench of spilled intestines and chopped meat. It all returned at night while he slept.
The aftereffects of that operation had driven him into the arms of Los Zetas. He told himself it was because they paid infinitely more than the Guatemalan army, but in reality, he had decided that if he was going to kill, he wanted to kill someone who wasn’t innocent. As if Los Zetas knew the difference.
Loco thoughts. He rubbed the little statue of La Santa Muerte on his seat, saying a small prayer for his soul. Wondering if the man he had boiled had also prayed to the patron saint of death. And whether that made them both insane.
* * *
Driving into the El Paso neighborhood known as Eagle, the sicario reflected that it didn’t look a whole lot different from Juárez. Very few trees, cinder-block houses with yards full of rock and dirt, and adobe dwellings interspersed with seedy automotive repair shops and convenience stores. Situated along the Chavez Border Highway, it was literally a stone’s throw from Mexico, butting right up against the Rio Grande River. The thought brought him some comfort that perhaps he could get away with what he’d been tasked.
He’d had no trouble crossing over and was glad he’d kept his passport up to date. He’d never used it to come into the United States but had always treasured it as a final out, a wild card that might come in handy should he be picked up by Mexican authorities—or should he need to run from other, less forgiving types.
The Paso del Norte crossing was northbound only, but he was sure the southbound crossing at Stanton Street would, if anything, be easier, since he would be headed into Mexico instead of the United States.
He turned left off of the Border Highway onto Park Street and began looking for the skate park. He crossed three intersections and started to wonder if the intelligence was wrong. At the fourth, he saw the corner of the park. He turned left again, now scanning for atmospherics. So far, so good. The Eagle neighborhood had a very high crime rate, but he wasn’t looking for police. He was searching for the street gang that owned this barrio and would be acting as lookouts for the Sinaloa cartel.
He took a left on South Hill Street, boxing his route in, and saw a tattooed hood wearing a dingy white wife-beater and jeans. He was lounging against the front wall of a meat market and talking to another street thug sitting on an overturned plastic bucket. The conversation stopped when his car came into view. They both eyeballed him as he turned, and the sicario wondered if this neighborhood was so close-knit that they’d know he didn’t have any business here. He ignored them, getting a quick glance at their side of the street, then driving past and looking to the left, away from their eyes so they couldn’t see his face. Giving them only a view of the wig and hat he wore.
Seventy-five meters down and he saw the safe house. It was a one-story brick structure with two windows, one on either side of a single door. Small, maybe three rooms total, butting right up to the sidewalk. No yard to speak of, which meant no chain-link fences to contend with. All in all, a plus for the sicario.
It was getting to be late afternoon, and while the sicario would have liked to wait until darkness, he wasn’t sure when the Sinaloa transporter would arrive. Once the reporter was loaded, there would be no chance of taking him. He drove around the block, passing the skate park again. This time, instead of continuing on, he stopped at the alley that ran behind the safe house, a dirty, narrow strip littered with trash. He backed up to the skate park and wedged his car in between two pickup trucks, getting it out of view.
He walked toward Hill Street, scanning left and right. When he reached the alley, having seen nothing alarming, he shifted left and went down it at a rapid pace, walking all the way to the next block. When he passed the safe house, he saw a back door, but it was heavily barred with a wrought-iron grate. Not an entrance, but it would work as an exit.
He circled back to his car, coming up with a plan. It would have to be quick and dirty, but with only one lookout position, they weren’t expecting trouble. At most, there would be three men inside to contend with. None would be expecting a threat, but that would change when he knocked on the door. They would arm themselves out of reflex. Unless . . .
9
The sicario picked up his pace and reached the skate park and his car. He drove it to the mouth of the alley, backing the vehicle just inside and off the street, but not close enough for the safe house to hear the engine. He threw his wig and hat into the backseat, lifted up a special compartment in the right rear door panel, and pulled out a suppressed Sig Sauer P226 nine-millimeter pistol. The weapon was bigger than he would have liked, made larger still by the five-inch suppressor, but it was necessary. He donned a specially made shoulder rig, seated the pistol, then put on a cheap nylon windbreaker to cover it.
He exited the car and began walking back around the block, toward South Hill Street and the meat market. He knew that the lookouts would focus on his bald skull and scorched forehead, and the image would preclude their brains from making any connection to the man who had just driven past. Which would cost them.
He turned the corner and walked with purpose straight toward the meat market, both gang members staring at him intently. He ignored them, stopping short of the building proper and veering toward a gate in the wooden fence that ensconced the market’s property. He opened it like he belonged and went through a six-foot-tall barricade that would preclude anyone from seeing what he was about to do. He searched the area with his eyes and saw nothing but old washing machines and beer cans. No windows on the building or witnesses in the yard. He knelt and called out in Spanish.
“Help me. Please come help.”
He waited, then repeated the call. Eventually, the one he’d seen on the bucket came through the gate, saying, “What do you want, cabrón?”
He jammed the suppressor into the thug’s throat and said, “Call your friend.”
The man splayed his hands out in a gesture of surrender.
The sicario waited a beat for compliance. When it didn’t occur, he twisted the barrel, pushing it deeper into the soft folds of flesh. “Call. Your. Friend.”
The man did, bleating like a goat. The sicario shot him from under the chin
, the bullet going through the brain and taking out a section of skull as it exited the top. The body hitting the ground made more noise than the suppressed 226. He waited.
The wife-beater rounded the corner cursing, walking with a swagger. He saw the body a split second before he felt the suppressor at the base of his jaw, just below his ear. He, too, held his arms out.
The sicario said, “Do not talk. Just nod yes. You know the house you are protecting?”
A nod.
“We’re going over there, and you’re going to knock on the door. Get them to open it without alerting them something is wrong. If you fail, you will die. If you succeed, you can run away down the street. I’ll do the rest. Do you understand?”
Another nod, but this time with a snarl on his face.
Trouble.
“Put your arms down. Look at me.”
The man/boy did so, glaring at him with a challenge, showing he wasn’t concerned.
“I know whose house that is, and they are of no help to you. I am a Los Zetas sicario. Do you know what this means?”
The toughness cracked and the thug tentatively nodded.
He jammed the barrel deep into the soft fold of flesh beneath the jaw. “Do you understand what this means? For you?”
The gang member became visibly scared, staring at the molten scars on the sicario’s forehead.
“I have made many men such as you cry for death. Weeping and begging for their mothers. Your next few minutes will decide if you do the same. Let’s go.”
This time the gang member nodded vigorously. He’d heard the stories. Maybe even seen the pictures. He’d played at being tough in his own little fishbowl, had dealt out his own version of justice in the barrio, but understood the man with the gun operated in a whole different universe of pain.
They crossed the street, the wife-beater walking in front. When they reached the brick of the house, the sicario stopped just outside the left window, his pistol down and hidden between the wall and his left leg.
Wife-beater looked at him once, a mixture of fear and resignation on his face, then knocked on the door. When someone answered from the other side, he stated he was making another run and wondered if the jefe wanted anything from the store.
The sicario admired his courage. It was the perfect story but was predicated on an answer. If the man behind the door said yes, he would have accomplished the mission. If he said no, the door wouldn’t open, and he would be dead.
The man said yes.
The sicario had counted the locks earlier and seen three. The gang member glanced at him, holding his position in front of the peephole and waiting on permission to run. The sicario strained to hear the locks. When he heard the second one click open, he shot wife-beater in the temple, the man crumpling to the concrete without a sound. By the time the third lock had turned he was standing over the body. When the door cracked an inch, he kicked it hard, throwing the man back.
The sicario stepped inside and drilled the guard twice in the face, causing him to slam against the wall and fling the wallet in his hand into the hallway. The sicario moved forward, training the Sig on every crevice. He saw doors to the right and left before the hallway spilled into an open den. He heard someone say something behind the door to the right. He kicked it open and found a man sitting on a toilet, his pants around his ankles. The man uttered something unintelligible, pure astonishment on his face, a newspaper in his hands. He tried to stand and the sicario put two rounds above his nose.
He raced to the den and found it empty but identified the back door in the center of the wall. He went to the cubby used as a kitchen and found it empty as well. He shuffled back to the final door, readied his pistol, and kicked it open.
On the floor was a Caucasian man, bound up like a calf at a rodeo. He held his hands out in front, shouting, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
When the sicario holstered his weapon, the man’s demeanor changed, and tears formed in his eyes. He began to chant, “Thank God . . . thank God . . . thank you . . . they were going to take me to Mexico . . . thank you.”
10
I rolled the dice and moved my backgammon piece, surprised that I was beating Knuckles, since he’d taught me how to play the game earlier that morning. I’d figured he was an old hand at backgammon and thus a better player, but then again, we were in the middle of a mission. Maybe he couldn’t multitask like a master such as myself.
Or maybe he was still pissed at me. Hard to tell. He’d been plenty mad last night, and I wasn’t sure which piece of anger had lingered: the fact that I’d let Jennifer go home or the fact that he’d figured out where she and I stood with each other.
The team had tracked Jake to a hotel called the President, a gaudy, giant monument of white marble that looked like it belonged more in Las Vegas than it did in Turkmenistan. Of course, it was owned by the president of the country. It was billed as a five-star resort used for dignitaries and diplomats, complete with indoor-outdoor pools, tennis courts, a spa, and a bar on the sixteenth floor, but, like everything else in this strange country, it gave a vibe that was a little off-kilter. Nothing overt. Just small things, like getting your hand shocked when you used the shower, or the maids rolling the dice about whether they’d show up to clean your room on a given day, or seeing the typed piece of paper in a document protector taped to the window telling the occupant not to open the window between certain hours. Strange all the way around.
Because the hotel was located far outside the city center and because of our little altercation last night, we’d decided to jump TOC to its location, reestablishing our operations at the new hotel. We would have had to do it anyway, since it was out all by itself and not within walking distance of anything, precluding conducting operations from our original hotel, but the police fight made it imperative that we get out of the area. It had been too dark in that alley for them to have gleaned any viable description, so they’d fall back on the only thing they had—hotels within walking distance of the scene—and that would have put us in the net.
As I was checking out, Knuckles came into the lobby. He’d already completed reconnaissance of Jake’s room and built a plan of attack. He’d “borrowed” a maid’s uniform and determined the room-cleaning schedule—which is to say there wasn’t one—meaning Jennifer could access it at any time of the day and not look out of place. He wasn’t too happy when I told him that Jennifer was headed to the airport instead of the new hotel. All the flights left at two or three in the morning, and I figured it was better to fly her home in the same cycle of darkness. The police would be looking for a couple, and getting her out would throw off their search. Of course, Knuckles didn’t see it that way.
“What do you mean, she’s leaving? We’re in the middle of a fucking mission.”
“Her brother’s in trouble. He left a voice mail that’s not something to mess around with.”
“So call him and tell him she’ll be home in a day or two. How bad could it be?”
“He won’t answer his phone. It goes straight to voice mail. Look, her brother’s a reporter in Dallas, and she thinks he was working on a story about the drug cartels.”
That gave him pause. We’d both kept up on what was going on in Mexico because of the potential nexus of the cartels and terrorists out to harm the United States.
I continued. “I heard the voice mail, and he was really in fear for his life. It sounded like someone was about to jerk the phone out of his hand.”
He took that in, then said, “You really think this is some type of Sopranos bullshit?”
“I don’t know, but Jennifer’s freaking out about it, and rightly so. She needs to get home.”
He tried to maintain his anger, but it was a losing battle. He knew the decision was correct, and he would have made it himself if it were someone under his command. He just didn’t like the fact that he had no control over our little c
ivilian company. And I understood that. We were still slogging through how such things worked and who was ultimately in charge, because my company was unique. It wasn’t established by the government, but by Jennifer and me through our own seed money, and yet we got a Taskforce paycheck for missions such as this.
On the one hand, we could be kicked to the curb as too much trouble, but on the other, our company allowed penetration of just about any place on earth—like it had here—and it was run by operators. Confusing, but that’s what the world was when you were working outside the traditional intelligence and defense architecture.
With diminishing aggravation, he said, “This damn mission won’t work without her. I’ve already got a maid’s uniform and a plan for entry.”
I smiled at that. A year ago he wouldn’t have used Jennifer at all if he could help it, instead giving her some menial task that wouldn’t affect the outcome of the mission. Now he was building operations that revolved around her participation.
“That’s not true,” I said. “The hard part is gaining entry to the room, and you’ve already cracked that. The rest is just cover development.”
The locks at the President Hotel were made by a company called Onity. They used key-cards just like hotel locks all over the world. The difference was that the Onity lock had a fairly well publicized hack utilizing the DC barrel connector at the base of the casement, whereby a simple tool could trick it into opening. Onity had done nothing about the vulnerability until a rash of robberies in Houston, Texas, prompted an outcry. They’d created a patch, but they had over ten thousand locks in use around the world, and Knuckles figured this backwater country wasn’t high on the list for getting fixed. The hack would still work here.