The Polaris Protocol

by Brad Taylor

  And triggered a shit storm.

  The cop gave a small jump when I entered the room, his eyes springing open at my words. He snapped his head at me, then back on a target to his front, seeing something in his mind’s eye that wasn’t there. He began jerking the trigger, getting off two shots before his chest erupted in a spray of blood. I heard the blast from my rear, then a snapping of rounds from a Glock. I whirled in the direction of the shot, seeing the bartender leaning against the wall, two holes in his chest, a double-barreled shotgun hanging limply in his hands. And Knuckles’s smoking barrel.

  Holy shit.

  He glanced my way, still covering the room, saying everything without speaking. In two steps I was on the bartender, leaving the cop for Knuckles. I grabbed his shirt, rapidly becoming soaked with blood, and yanked him across the bar, slamming him to the floor. I searched, finding no other weapons, then began to triage him, but it was too late.

  He was dead.

  Knuckles finished with the cop’s destroyed body and found his phone. He looked at the log and said, “One call made.”

  In a calm voice, I said, “We need to go before a crowd shows up.”

  We left the bodies where they lay, with me wondering how it would have worked out for the bartender if I hadn’t entered. Why did he go for the shotgun? The only good thing was we knew for sure the cop was an evil cuss.

  Getting to the sidewalk, I saw we were clear. If anyone had heard the shots, they weren’t coming to investigate. Yet. We jumped into the back of Jennifer’s car and I called Blood and Decoy for exfil. She hit the gas without saying a word.

  With Jennifer weaving through traffic, Knuckles said, “I took the shot. I’m not sure whose bullets hit him.”

  I said, “You did the right thing. It was a gunfight. You couldn’t let him continue with a loaded shotgun.”

  He said, “It was a double barrel, and I think he fired both. I killed him after he was no threat.”

  I saw where this was going and immediately went to damage control. Not for the mission, but for Knuckles. “Bullshit. It was my call to enter. I did it when I saw the cop’s gun. I should’ve looked into the bar to see what he was aiming at. I should’ve pulled back. Screw all that innocents-killed crap. He had a shotgun and was shooting. I only heard one barrel. You probably saved my life.”

  Knuckles nodded, but I could see the cost. I said again, “You made a right call. And you aren’t that good of a shot. The cop probably hit him.”

  He laughed for the first time, a stilted thing, but a laugh nonetheless. I said, “Check your gun. Let’s get back into the mission.”

  He glanced at me, then dropped the magazine and racked the slide of his Glock, clearing the chamber and checking its function before slapping in a new magazine. Making sure it was ready for another fight. Something I knew he would understand.

  Jennifer heard the conversation and waited until we were through the traffic circle before talking, concentrating on driving instead of the chaos behind us. When we were back into the regular flow she asked, “What the hell happened? What was the shooting?”

  Knuckles said, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. The cop’s dead, and we didn’t shoot him.”

  She said, “Then what was that conversation about?”

  I said, “It was about a situation I shouldn’t have put us in. The cop’s dead, and we’re clear.”

  She looked at me, getting my eyes in the rearview mirror. She saw not to ask. She cut to the chase, which surprised me. “So what do we have? Since he’s dead, they didn’t get the information about the GPS device?”

  Knuckles said, “He made a call.”

  I saw her face fall, and the look aggravated me a little, given what we’d just gone through to save her brother. Given what I knew Knuckles was now going to question for the rest of his life. But we still had a mission. A way to make the bartender’s death mean something.

  I said, “Knuckles, get a trace of the number he called. Jennifer, keep going south, toward the grid Mr. Gomez gave us for the last sighting.”

  I got on the phone, calling the pilots. “What have you got?”

  “Nothing. We didn’t get anything. The city’s too big. Saying ‘fly south’ didn’t help any.”

  “Stand by.”

  Knuckles talked into his phone for about a minute, then nodded at me.

  I said, “You got a grid on your phone now? From the Taskforce?”

  The pilot fiddled around a little bit, then said, “Yeah, I got it.”

  “Vector on that, right now.”

  “Pike, I can’t do loops in the sky. Air-traffic control is already bugging me about loitering.”

  “Come back to the airport on that grid. Tell them you have a maintenance issue and are returning. Fly low and slow. We need that ping.”

  “How am I going to explain that after I land? When I don’t have an issue?”

  “Figure something out.”

  “I’m not sure I should jeopardize the cover for this. We don’t do this sort of thing, ripping around by the seat of our pants. I’ll fly out to El Paso first, like my flight plan says.”

  After what we’d just been through, and the stakes, I was sick of his posturing behind some bullshit security classification, in no mood to hear some damn pilot at twenty grand second-guess what I was ordering when I was dealing with the blood.

  “Screw the cover. You’re jeopardizing someone’s life right now.” I took a breath before continuing. When I did, it was cold rage coming through. “You turn that fucking plane around or I can promise you you’re jeopardizing your own life. Do you understand that, or do you need to call the Taskforce for confirmation?”

  I heard nothing for a moment, then, “Roger. Turning back now.”

  About damn time that guy realized who I am.

  35

  Felix Gomez had grown somewhat used to his situation. The violence of his abduction, the loss of control, and the feeling of impending doom all competed for his attention, but he’d managed to adjust. The first night had been the worst, when he’d been literally catatonic in fear, but that had steadily eroded as he realized that they meant to keep him for his worth and had no inclination to torture him for amusement. The night before he’d even managed to fall asleep. He’d had nightmares, but all in all he was holding up better than the others who were with him.

  A man of about fifty and a boy not much older than him, both seemed on the verge of a nervous breakdown, their faces reflecting a hollow shell devoid of hope.

  Perhaps it was because of their respective timelines. The old man had told him he’d been here for over a week, and the younger one was running up against a week and a half. Felix knew the average time for successful negotiation and repatriation was five to seven days. After that, the kidnappers either felt they were being jerked around, or that the families simply couldn’t come up with the money, with the victim usually found dead alongside a dusty road, bound and blindfolded with packing tape. Another encintado to add to the statistics. Both of the men with him were running out of time and knew it.

  Or perhaps it was the fact that he hadn’t been abused like the two other captives. The older one’s face was swollen, with a bloodshot, purple black eye, and he was missing his index finger on one hand, the stump covered in dirty cloth. A “proof of life” sent to someone to communicate that Los Zetas meant business. The younger one had a bandage on his upper arm that was mottled red, fresh blood seeping from the wound over the crust of the old. Felix had no idea what that represented, but nothing of the sort had happened to him. Maybe if he’d been treated to constant abuse, he’d be as mentally crushed as they were.

  It might also have been his faith in his father. He knew Arturo Gomez would move heaven and earth to free him, and had the power and money to do so. He was sure they were tracking him right now, because he had an ace up his sleeve. Well, und
erneath his sleeve, that is. He unconsciously rubbed his left triceps, where his ace was buried.

  Initially he was petrified the men would undress him when he was placed in the basement, but all they’d done was take anything that could have been of value for escape, such as his shoes and cell phone, leaving everything else as he wore it. Leaving his belt, which was much, much more valuable for escape than his cell phone. Had he been able to call, he had no idea what he would have said to get them to his location, but his belt was sending that out constantly.

  He wondered if his father was even now planning his rescue.

  The lights flashed on and his two roommates scurried to their designated eyebolts, the older one silently weeping.

  Felix did the same, as the enforcer Felix had taken to calling El Barbudo, or the bearded one, came down the stairs. In one hand he held a fillet knife. In the other was a machete. He ignored the other two blubbering captives and came straight to Felix, throwing a pair of handcuffs at his feet. Felix manacled himself to the eyebolt.

  His arms drawn out before him, his hands locked, El Barbudo gave him a choice. Tell which arm held the antikidnapping chip or have them both cut off with the machete. Felix felt his world collapse, the reason for the other boy’s upper-arm wound becoming crystal clear.

  How did they know? How did they know?

  He feigned innocence, and El Barbudo raised the machete, lightly touching the upper bicep of his right arm. Manacled to the eyebolt, his arm in perfect position for getting hacked off at the shoulder, Felix whispered the answer. Ten seconds later, he was screaming. A minute passed, and the man was holding the little device in his hand, covered in a coating of bodily fluid. He dropped it on the floor and stomped. The glass shattered with a small pop, the sound a tiny punctuation of Felix’s dwindling chances for survival.

  El Barbudo unlocked his arms and tossed a bandage on the floor. He left, dropping the room into darkness yet again. Felix sat in the gloom, weeping, his face now reflecting the same hollow shell of the other two captives’.

  Devoid of hope.

  36

  The pilot put me on hold, and I was sure it was just to aggravate me. Jennifer saw my face and pulled one hand off the wheel, slapping my shoulder. I glanced her way and she said, “Give him a break. He’s working the problem.”

  From the back, looking at a tablet, Knuckles said, “Keep going straight. Right up ahead at the school. That’s the location. The last place his GPS pinged. The phone trace is about four miles away.”

  I motioned for Jennifer to stop the car. There was no sense in driving around in circles, and if the target ended up being near the trace, I didn’t want to burn it by rolling aimlessly. We were far south of the city center, on the edges of Mexico City proper, located in a cul-de-sac with a primary school at the end. Why it pinged here at a dead end was beyond me, but there were a ton of parked cars, so maybe it was a transfer point to a different vehicle.

  I stared at the phone, willing it to speak, and was startled when it did.

  “Pike, this is Jim. We flew right over the plot and got nothing. We’re headed back to the airport.”

  Damn it.

  “Listen, that plot was general. All we know is it’s tied in some way. If I remember, you collect in a cone off the left side of the aircraft. Is that correct?”

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss the capability.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Okay, fine. I want you to do a slow left turn with that grid at the center. One loop, with like a two-mile radius.”

  I heard nothing for a moment, then, “All right, all right. We’re looping now.”

  We waited, knowing it would take only a minute or two, me putting the phone on speaker and setting it in the seat. It looked like Jennifer was actually holding her breath. Knuckles said, “What do you want to do if this fails? Hit the phone trace?”

  Jennifer scowled as if he was putting out bad vibes. I said, “I don’t know. This will probably be it, unless the Taskforce can give us a lead to the threat from the other end. We can’t hit a phone just because the cop called it. We have no idea what it’s tied to.”

  Jennifer snapped daggers at me with her eyes, and I knew we were going to part ways on how this shook out. She wanted her brother, but we were operating on the mission profile that the brother would lead to the threat. If we couldn’t find him, then he wasn’t worth Taskforce time that could be better spent working the problem from another direction. It was a hard truth, but it was reality.

  I said, “Jennifer, if this doesn’t pan out, we need to turn what we know about your brother over to the proper authorities. It’s been forty-eight hours. Let them work his abduction while we do what we do: find the threat.”

  “What good will the authorities do? The US won’t conduct any investigation down here, and you just watched a Mexican federal agent get killed because he was working for the cartels. You really want me to go to them?”

  I started to say something and was cut off by the pilot. “Loop complete. Dry hole.”

  Jennifer closed her eyes, her lips set into a grim line.

  End of the road.

  I said, “Roger, Jim. Thanks anyway. Get back and work your cover. File a flight plan for the US tomorrow. We’ll contact the Taskforce and give you further guidance.”

  Jennifer said, “Bullshit! This is bullshit. I’m not giving up. You can fly back, but I’m staying.”

  She pounded her fist into the dash, frustrated. I reached forward, grabbing her wrists. “Jennifer! Stop it.”

  She glared at me as if I was at fault, and the pilot spoke again, the line still open. “Pike, Pike, we’re getting something.”

  We all stared at the phone. I said, “What?”

  “A string of SMS on the line. Apparently the backlog that hadn’t gotten out yet.”

  No way.

  “You’re getting SMS texts? Right now?”

  “We were getting a steady stream, but it just stopped midtext. It’s dead.”

  Jennifer was pinging off the seat, wanting to talk. I held up my finger and whispered, “Call the Taskforce. Let them know it’s coming.” She started dialing furiously, and I said to the pilot, “Get that data to the Taskforce. Tell them it’s from me. They’ll know what to do with it.”

  Five minutes later we had the plot. Fifteen separate pings that were all on the same house. The last one time-stamped five hours before, which was ominous. Clearly, the SMS stream had been interrupted by something before it could complete the backlog of updates. Hopefully it was a dead battery.

  The good news was the target was about four miles away as the crow flies, and within two hundred meters of the phone trace. Inside the circle of probable error.

  The Taskforce had already pulled satellite photos, complete with an imagery analyst’s description of what they thought we were up against, which was a fairly large estate in a neighborhood full of large estates, called Bosques de las Lomas. I gave the tablet with the downloads to Knuckles, telling him to come up with a plan for in extremis assault, then called the rest of the team to my location.

  While they were coming, Knuckles said, “You want to hit it now? Or wait until we can get some detailed intel from a recce? We don’t even have our shooting package here. Body armor, breaching charges, long guns, all that shit.”

  I looked at Jennifer, who was frothing at the mouth, and said, “I’m leaning toward hitting it. What do you think?” Giving him the out.

  He stared out the window for a moment, then exhaled. “Yeah, we need to go. It’ll be a two-hour round-trip for the kit, and we don’t have that kind of time. That data stream shutting down could be because of the cop’s phone call. Which means they could all be getting packaged for transport right now. We know the stream was active as of five minutes ago.”

  I saw the tension leave Jennifer’s body and said, “So how do we hit it?”

 
; “Well, an explosive breach is out of the question. I say low-vis and slow. Get in through the pool area. It looks like a damn jungle. Get over the wall and start from there. Taskforce hasn’t identified any guards on the outside, so we can make it to breach unobserved. My bet is they’re hiding in plain sight, using the exclusive neighborhood as security. Hell, the cops probably know it’s a narco house.”

  “What’s your take on the manpower? I’m thinking no more than five. Just guards for the kidnapped folks. Enough to run errands and provide twenty-four/seven coverage.”

  “Yeah, but this isn’t like Jennifer’s show in Ciudad Juárez. We know at least two are in there—Jack and Felix—but there may be more, and they may not be able to move on their own. We’ll need to secure the entire objective before exfil.”

  I said, “You think we have the manpower for that? Four guys?”

  “Five. Jennifer comes in with us. We’ll do the clearing, but she can help with security, hostage screening, and other shit, freeing us up to take every room with four on assault. Overwhelming them.”

  I said, “Whoa. She’s not an assaulter. She can pull security outside for anyone coming up the drive. Give us early warning and other things, but she’s not coming in. Anyway, someone needs to stage for exfil.”

  Jennifer cleared her throat from the front seat. I’d forgotten she was there. She said, “I’ll do it. I can do whatever you want.”

  I said, “Jennifer, I get you want to save your brother, but let us handle this.”

  I saw the other team vehicles pull up, and Knuckles said, “Remember what I told you in Turkmenistan? Is that happening here? Because we need her inside the target. She doesn’t enter, and I can’t recommend assault.”

  Am I trying to protect her? Jennifer wasn’t trained as an assaulter. She could shoot, no doubt about it, but she would only slow us down, and speed was the one edge we had. The one thing that would allow us to defeat everyone in the house, by moving faster than they could react individually. I saw Decoy and Blood get out of the cars and a thought sprang unbidden into my mind.