by Marc Rainer
"We'll get the info dump this afternoon," Doroz said. "Lynn can do her magic; maybe then we'll have something to follow-up with."
5:30 p.m.
The Metro Maintenance truck pulled into a parking slot in front of The Dome Racquet Club, and Roscoe Briggs hopped down from the driver's seat. He opened one of the side panels on the vehicle, removing a toolbox and a small duffle bag. He unlocked the front door, and headed for the locker room. Reaching the last locker on the end, he located another key on his ring and opened the locker, leaving the gym bag inside it. He sat down on one of the benches and opened the tool box. The smell of Kentucky Fried Chicken filled the room as he pulled the box containing his dinner from the top tray.
Gotta wait a few minutes to make it look like a service call. Might as well make use of the time, he thought.
Tampico Naval Air Station
Tamaulipas, Mexico
11:23 p.m.
"Will you at least be here for Christmas, Luis?" she asked. "I had to spend Thanksgiving without you, and I'm not spending another holiday alone. If you won't let me come down there, you're coming up here."
"I will be there, my love," Aguilar said. "I already have the leave request approved. We will have two weeks together. Lieutenant Torres has agreed to take my company for that time, and he's becoming a fine officer."
"He has a good commander as a teacher."
"I hope so. How are your folks?"
"Good, Luis. Daddy's diabetes is back, so he's having to watch his diet; otherwise everyone is fine. How are you?"
"Too tough and sneaky for the Zetas, so don't worry."
"You know that's impossible—on both fronts."
"I'll be careful. Please do the same. I'll call again soon. And I will be in San Antonio for Christmas."
South of Nuevo Laredo
Tamaulipas, Mexico
December 17, 2010, 10:13 a.m.
Heriberto Lazcano and Ramón Domínguez sat down beside the blindfolded and terrified man, who was shaking in his chair. Lazcano sat on the man's left, while Dominguez flanked him on the right. Lazcano nodded, and Dominguez reached up and untied the man's blindfold.
"We will wait for your eyes to get adjusted to the light, warden," Lazcano said. He waited for a moment until it was clear that the man's ability to focus had been restored. "Better now? Excellent." Lazcano saw that the warden was taking in the scene around him.
Lazcano's ranch was ornately decorated with the usual trappings accumulated by one of low birth with too much money to spend. No expense had been spared in the course of ensuring that things appeared expensive. The chairs the men sat on were upholstered in a gaudy, gold-trimmed, red crushed velvet. The cart in front of them was a pure silver serving piece. On it was a bottle of Lazcano's best champagne, three golden goblets, and three large stacks of American currency.
Just in front of their chairs, the ground opened into a square pit, approximately twenty feet deep. A metal railing surrounded the pit, with the exception of a gap, about five feet wide, directly in front of the chairs occupied by the three men. Each had an unobstructed view of the bottom of the pit, and of two metal doors on opposite walls of the hole.
"I must apologize for the manner in which you were brought here, warden," Lazcano said, "but you had refused our invitation to come voluntarily. I assure you that—assuming we can come to some reasonable accommodation today—your wife and children will not be harmed in any way. What I am proposing will, I hope, be a clear choice for you. I do not choose to rule by force unnecessarily; I always try to present an option—an opportunity—to avoid the use of force."
Lazcano waived his hand and a Zeta standing across the open expanse of the pit pushed a button on a control panel. One of the doors in the pit opened, and a man was shoved into the center of the pit, falling on his side in the middle of the floor.
"Carlos!" the warden exclaimed involuntarily.
"Yes, I do believe you know this man. You do, don't you?" Lazcano asked, smiling at Dominguez.
"He is my deputy," the warden said, looking first at Lazcano, then at Dominguez, his eyes imploring them not to harm his co-worker. "He is a good man, with a family—"
"I am sorry, my friend, but you are wrong on both counts," Lazcano interrupted, shaking his head in disagreement. "He is not a good man; he is a foolish man, and he no longer has any family. He stupidly refused the same offer I am about to propose to you."
Lazcano nodded again to the man at the control panel, and the same door which had opened previously opened again, and gloved hands rolled three human heads—one of a woman, and two of young children—onto the floor next to the man in the pit. The man collapsed to his knees. A pitiful cry of agony wailed from his throat. The warden stood, staring at the floor of the pit in horror.
Lazcano grabbed the back of the warden's belt and pulled him violently back into the chair. "Careful, my friend, you don't want to join him down there, and you might fall." He nodded again, and the man at the control panel pushed another button.
The warden looked as the other door to the pit opened, a metal plate rising slowly from the floor. As soon as the plate had risen about three feet, a black and yellow shape streaked across the bottom of the pit. A huge tiger was upon the deputy warden in an instant, giving him time for only a brief, terrified shriek. The big cat's jaws clamped upon his throat, and three hundred foot-pounds of pressure simultaneously severed the arteries to the man's brain and broke his neck. When the body ceased its involuntary spasms, the tiger began feeding.
"I call him Felix—Felix the cat—probably a poor joke, but a fitting name, don't you think?" Lazcano asked.
The warden said nothing, vomiting instead.
"Pour the man some champagne, Ramón," Lazcano instructed Dominguez. "He'll need to get that taste out of his mouth."
Dominguez handed the goblet to the warden, who took a timid sip with shaking hands.
"I assure you that the champagne is free of any harmful additives," Lazcano said, pouring himself a drink. "In fact, Ramón and I will toast you from the same bottle."
Dominguez took the cue, filling his own goblet, then raising it as Lazcano did the same. They each took a drink.
"Now, let's get down to business," Lazcano said.
"What do you want from me?" the warden asked, his voice quivering. He looked down into the pit, where the tiger was gnawing on one of the severed heads.
"A simple—and as I said earlier—clear choice," Lazcano replied. "You can refuse us, and try and tame poor Felix down there, who is not fed on a regular schedule, or you can open the doors to your prison tomorrow. We have many friends inside your facility, and they tell us they do not care for it much. They simply wish to rejoin our ranks, and with the doors unlocked, they can return to us without the need for harming any more of your staff. In addition, the money before you is yours to take for your trouble. I know we have somewhat inconvenienced you today. So," he paused, "what will it be? The money or the tiger?"
"I will do what you ask," the warden said, hanging his head.
"A very wise decision," Lazcano said, patting the warden on the shoulder, "and one that tells me we will be able to do more business together in the future." He nodded toward Dominguez. "Ramón, please see that our new friend arrives home safely. His family is waiting for him."
Tampico Naval Air Station
Tamaulipas, Mexico
December 19, 2010, 10:27 a.m.
"What is it, Torres?" Captain Luis Aguilar looked up from his desk when he saw the lieutenant standing in the doorway. "You look confused."
"Pardon the interruption, Capitán. I just got a call from one of our men outside Nuevo Laredo. There's apparently been a mass escape of sorts from the federal prison there."
"What do you mean 'of sorts'? Is it an escape or not?"
"According to the report, a hundred and fifty-one Zetas escaped yesterday. They appear to have just walked out the front door. Someone left it unlocked."
"They left it unlocked just
for the Zetas? How many of them were on our high-priority list, or do we know that yet?"
"We know, Capitán. One of our detachments is at the prison now. The warden just resigned and left the area. We are looking for him now. The deputy warden has disappeared, along with his family. The remaining guards have performed a head count, under our supervision. Fifty-eight of the escapees were high profile."
"Thank you, Torres. Keep me informed."
"Sí, Capitán."
The lieutenant shut the door behind him. Aguilar buried his hands in his face for a moment. Beautiful. Those we succeed in arresting merely wait in their cells to be released—not by the courts—by their cartel bosses. Our judicial system is completely broken now. My poor Mexico.
FBI Field Office
Washington, D.C.
December 20, 2010, 11:15 a.m.
Lynn Trask spread the pages of the cell phone records across the squad conference table and began pointing out highlighted lines on the pages.
"See, we have fairly regular calls to the same number from four of the dead hookers' phones." She looked up at her husband. "Your favorite 'Misty' called this number a lot. There are a few common numbers between some of the phones, maybe regular customers or something else like clothing stores, but this is the most frequently called common number with links to all the overdose deaths."
"So who is our mystery caller?" Trask asked her.
"The subscriber for this phone is Metro Maintenance Services, which appears to be a one-man janitorial firm run by a guy named Roscoe Briggs."
"Does our man Roscoe have any history?" Dixon Carter asked, picking up the phone records and examining the highlighted calls.
"None that I could find," Lynn replied. "Nothing serious anyway. His company truck has a bad habit of attracting parking tickets."
"We have dates and times on those citations?" Doroz asked. "Anything that lines up with our overdose locations or crime scenes?"
"Damn." Lynn rolled her eyes. "I thought I'd anticipated all these questions in advance, Bear. Hadn't got to that one yet. I've just been working from the phone data so far."
"Tim—" Doroz started to assign the lead, but was cut off.
"I'm on it, Bear," Wisniewski said. "I'll pick all the citations up from traffic and see if there's any linkage." He grabbed a jacket and headed for the door.
"What did you say the name of that company was, Lynn?" Gordon Hamilton looked like he was coming out of a mental fog. "Sorry, these morning squad meetings after my night shifts are screwing up my body clock."
"Metro Maintenance Services."
Hamilton nodded. "I'm sure I saw that truck out on the track on one of the meetings I had with Bootsy. It looked like some of the working girls knew him from more than just clean-up or handyman work."
"Dix, you and Tim need to pay this guy a visit," Doroz said. "I'd go with you, but let's make this look like some routine police inquiries first. No Bureau presence on the initial contact. Get a story from him. If it doesn't line up, we'll start watching him. Hammer, keep your eyes out for him on your nightly rounds, if you can keep 'em open. Go home and get some sleep."
"Can I make a suggestion?" Trask asked.
"Of course," Doroz said. "Didn't mean to cut you out of the discussion."
"You didn't, Bear. I just think it might be a good idea to see what kind of account sheets Mr. Briggs keeps. If he's cooperative, tell him we might like to look at his customer records—to help identify some of our Jane Does—something like that. We might want to see if he's servicing anyone besides hookers." Trask felt himself doing a double-take. "That didn't exactly come out right, did it?"
"I got the idea," chuckled Carter. "We'll see who does his taxes, too, in case we want to throw a subpoena at them."
"Good," Trask nodded. "And speaking of subpoenas, let me know which phone company provides service for Metro Maintenance. We'll hit them with a Grand Jury subpoena for Briggs' phone records, and see who he might be calling besides dead hookers. I'll put a 'do not disclose' letter in with the subpoena so that his phone company won't tip him off. Keep me posted, please. I have gods on Olympus who require frequent input."
Nuevo Laredo
Tamaulipas, Mexico
December 24, 2010, 5:00 a.m.
Captain Luis Aguilar mentally patted himself on the back. Just as I suspected. Even thugs have to sleep sometime. The streets of Nuevo Laredo, the headquarters city of Los Zetas, were deserted. Aguilar steered his car, a 2003 Toyota Corolla packed to the roof with boxes and clothing, through roads almost completely barren of traffic. The cartel sleeps, and the good people hide from them. He reached the border gates, showed his military ID on the Mexican side, and was waved through to the American side. There, his status as the spouse of an American citizen got him another nod of approval after a drug dog declined to alert on his car, much to the surprise of its handler, who was sure that the fully loaded vehicle must have been hiding contraband of some variety.
Once inside Texas, he headed southeast, reaching the community of Zapata just as the sun was coming up over the Rio Grande. He was glad Linda had changed their holiday location from her parents' home in San Antonio to the house on Falcon Lake. They would have some much needed privacy for a day or two before heading north for a late Christmas with her family. He had asked for two weeks of leave, but had been granted ten days to spend with her, the first vacation time he'd taken in more than a year.
He reached the lake house, parked the car and headed inside, finding the front door unlocked. He went into the bedroom and saw her through an open set of sliding doors. She was on the deck overlooking the water, watching the sunrise and tending to some blue flowers in a planter on the rail. She felt his footsteps on the planks behind her and turned, kissing him hard, pouring her relief and desperation into him.
"I saw the blue curls," he said, pointing to the flowers. "My favorites. Where did you find them?"
"On the side of the road driving down from San Antonio. My favorites, too."
"You left the door unlocked," he admonished her gently. "Not wise."
"As if driving through that hell-hole Nuevo Laredo alone was a good idea," she shot back. She put his face in her hand and kissed him again. "I was worried sick about you. You should have taken a safer route, or flown into San Antonio."
"If I had flown, there wouldn't have been room for all the things you wanted me to bring from the house."
"If you'd let me stay with you in the house, that wouldn't have been necessary."
"We settled that some time ago. You're safer here in the States, and it was cheaper for me to drive your things up than to ship them, or for you to buy everything new. Anyway, I'm safe, I'm here, and I have missed you terribly."
She kissed him again. He wrapped his right arm around her shoulder, and swept her legs up with his left. He carried her into the bedroom, where they raced to see who could undress the fastest.
An hour later, he held her, looking over her shoulder as they both looked at the water through the glass doorway.
"It looks so peaceful now," she said. "It's hard to believe that three months ago, that poor woman watched her husband getting shot off his jet ski."
"More evil from Lazcano's Zetas," he said. "And after killing your tourist, they murdered the lead investigator trying to solve the case, and sent his head to us in a box. His name was Rolando Flores. I had met him once or twice at some conferences. We were still trying to work with our local law enforcement agencies, before they were all compromised or wiped out. He was a good man; fearless."
"How did it come to this, Luis?" she asked, shaking her head.
"Your country's demand for illegal things, and my country's supply of men willing to do evil things. It's one of those perfect storms you talk about, and we seem to be in the middle of it." He kissed her bare shoulder. "That lake out there was formed when our countries could actually work together."
"1953. Daddy told me the story when he first bought this place. It's supposed to be
a neutral, international playground, supplying some electricity for both sides of the border. Now it has pirates. Your Zetas are robbing fishermen, terrifying everyone. All the boats hug the American side now. They're afraid to go too far out. Daddy used to take the boat all the way to the point on the other side to fish." She looked down from the deck toward the boat dock where an old but well-maintained wooden bass boat was tied up. "Now he won't go out of sight of the house."
"I used to fish that point from the bank on the other side," he said. "Cane poles, of course." He patted her shoulders. "We're working on it. Give us time. We're making progress."
She rolled over and kissed him again. "I know you are. I just don't want you to be a casualty of all this, before we can live together normally, before we can start a family—be a family."
"If that ever happens, you can give me a Viking funeral."
"WHAT?! Don't even joke about that!" She sat up, the sheet falling off her shoulders. "Why Vikings, anyway? What brought that up?"
"I am a marine. In many ways, the Vikings were the original marines, the first to do amphibious assaults."
"I see."
"Nothing fancy, really. A small longboat will do. You'll just have to find an archer who's good enough to light the boat with a flaming arrow once it has been pushed away from the shore."
"Oh good grief!" She fell back onto the bed and started to giggle. "Luis, you are certifiably nuts sometimes."
"You could do it here. At the beach house, on the lake. Surely there's a good longboat builder around here somewhere."
"In south Texas?"
"Perhaps the bass boat, then."
"Enough of this, Luis." She wasn't giggling anymore.
"I have a man inside the Zetas now," he said, running his hand down her cheek. "He usually keeps me a step ahead of them. I trust him completely, and his information is always accurate. It won't be long before we capture or kill Lazcano. The snake can only grow so many heads if we keep chopping them off. In the meantime, I'll be careful."