Death's White Horses: A Jeff Trask Crime Drama (Jeff Trask crime drama series Book 3)

by Marc Rainer

  Miguel raised his left hand by his face, indicating his surrender. His right hand, rising more slowly, was not empty. The .45 fired twice, and Vicente Dominguez fell lifeless to the pavement.

  Miguel cranked the Subaru's engine, turned the car across the Zeta's body, and sped out of the park, his own headlights turned off this time. He heard Torres' voice on the phone lying on the seat next to him.

  "Are you alright? I heard gunfire! Are you alright?"

  Miguel picked up the phone. "I am alright for now, Capitán, but I may not be for long. My cover is blown. I just had to kill The Rider. El Ratón and the others are already looking for me. I cannot go back to the hacienda, and they will have roadblocks set up in Nuevo Laredo. Where should I go? I do not have much fuel."

  He waited for an answer, Torres was strangely silent.

  "Capitán? Are you there?"

  "Yes, my friend. I'm afraid I have no answer for you at the moment. We are too far away from you to arrange a pickup on such short notice. Which direction are you heading?"

  "South and east, away from Nuevo Laredo."

  "Keep going that way. I'll call you back as soon as I can."

  Zapata, Texas

  1:06 a.m.

  The phone rang beside Aguilar's bed. He shook off the sleep and answered the call. "Yes?"

  "Major, I'm sorry to disturb you."

  "Torres? What's wrong?"

  "It's our friend, sir." Torres relayed the details of the call from Miguel. "I have nothing to offer him, sir. I didn't know anyone else to call."

  Aguilar was already pulling on some clothes. "Tell him to head for the point, Torres, do you understand? Hide his car and just make it to the point."

  "The point? Yes, Major, I'll tell him."

  "What is it, Luis?" Linda was awake now, sitting up in bed. "Where are you going?"

  "I have to take the boat out. Our man with the Zetas is in trouble."

  "Where are you going?" she demanded.

  He leaned over and kissed her. He spoke calmly, slowly. "I have to do this. If you want to help, call your brother and tell him I'm heading for the point."

  "I'm going with you."

  He held a hand up. "No. You must call your brother; I must leave now."

  Aguilar slipped on a pair of deck shoes and opened the bedroom door. Trask was standing there shirtless, barefoot and in a pair of jeans.

  "Too many beers. I had to pee. Trouble?"

  "My source with the Zetas is about to be killed unless I can rescue him. Can you shoot?"

  "Yeah. Some."

  "You don't have to do this. It could go badly."

  "I'm in."

  "Let's go then."

  Trask ran toward the boat house, following Aguilar down the dark boardwalk from the house. He turned when he heard Lynn calling after him.

  "Jeff?"

  "Talk to Linda, Lynn. Help her. I'm going with Luis."

  "Where?"

  "Talk to Linda."

  They reached the boathouse. Aguilar reached above the doorway and brought down a long object before tossing it to Trask. A rifle. Remington 700, I think, night vision scope. Trask jumped in the front after Aguilar took the seat in the rear by the outboard. The motor roared to life, and Aguilar pointed the little boat out toward the middle of the lake.

  "Where exactly are we heading, Luis?" Trask yelled over the noise of the engine.

  "Mexico, amigo" Aguilar yelled back. "Can you use that, or should we switch places?"

  Trask checked the bolt and the safety on the rifle, and peered through the scope.

  "I've used one of these—or at least one like it—a lot more than I have one of those," he said, pointing to the outboard.

  "Stay there, then. Hopefully, you won't have to use either one tonight."

  Amen to that, Trask said to himself. He looked at the night sky. Good. Lots of cloud cover. At least we've got that going for us.

  The trip across the mile of water seemed like an eternity, the little outboard driving the old boat as hard as it could at full throttle. Trask watched the approaching coastline through the scope.

  "Do you see anything, Jeff ?"

  Trask looked back at Aguilar, stunned to have heard the whisper so clearly.

  I got it now. He's killed the engine. We're coasting toward the bank. "Nothing yet, Luis," he said quietly.

  "Keep looking. Sweep the bank with the scope."

  Trask did as he was instructed, moving the rifle from side to side along the spit of scrub-lined sand that jutted out into the water. Suddenly, a figure crouched by the water's edge was waving at them.

  "I've got him. There."

  "We can't risk the motor yet. He may have been followed." Aguilar barked a command softly in Spanish. "I told him to swim to us," he explained.

  Trask looked through the scope again. The man was already in the water, breast-stroking quietly toward the boat. Trask swept the coastline with the scope again. "All clear for now, Luis."

  "Excellent."

  The swimmer reached the boat, and Trask and Aguilar pulled him in. The man hugged Aguilar, and babbled something very rapidly in Spanish.

  Whatever language that was in, it sure sounded like thank you forever and I owe you my life and let's get the hell out of here, Trask thought.

  Aguilar cranked the outboard back to life.

  "Jeff, Let's switch now. Just keep it pointed that way." Aguilar pointed back toward the center of the lake. Trask crawled back to the rear of the boat and took the outboard's control bar, handing the rifle back to Aguilar.

  "It's on full throttle," Aguilar said. "Hold it steady and straight." He took the rifle and lay prone, facing the rear of the boat and the Mexican shore.

  Trask was starting to breathe easier. I think we just pulled this off. Suddenly he heard something whiz by his head, and saw a splash in the water ahead of the boat. A microsecond later, the sounds caught up with them. Shit, was that gunfire? Is somebody shooting at us? Trask ducked low instinctively. Any doubt he may have had was erased a fraction of a second later by the sound of the rifle in Aguilar's hands as he returned fire. Two lights started sweeping the water around them. He heard automatic weapons firing.

  "Searchlights. Zigzag" Aguilar yelled.

  It was a command that Trask was following before it was issued. He kept the throttle wide open, driving the boat left and right at irregular angles and intervals. He heard the sounds of other engines approaching them. For the first time since picking up their passenger, Trask took a look behind the boat. He wished he hadn't.

  Two high speed boats, long and sleek with lights mounted forward, were rapidly gaining on them. Riflemen in each of the boats were firing, the muzzle flashes of their weapons piercing the darkness. Trask heard Aguilar's rifle fire a shot, and the light on one of the chase boats went out. A round from one of the Mexican snipers struck the back edge of the bass boat, and Trask felt an impact on the back of his left shoulder. Damn. Probably a big splinter. Lynn's going to give me hell about this. I just had that one fixed.

  He took another glance behind them. One of the Zetas' boats was a mere thirty yards behind them now. Trask thought he saw one of the men on the boat zero in with his rifle. He's aiming at my head!

  Then the Zetas' boat exploded.

  Trask whipped his head toward the front of the boat. Racing by them, toward the remaining Zeta vessel, was a big gunboat with the words, "Texas Highway Patrol" painted proudly on her side. Each of the three machine gun batteries was blazing away.

  The gunboat made straight for the Zeta vessel, and the Zetas' craft seemed to disintegrate before his eyes. He saw one figure leap into the water just before the Highway Patrol boat sliced through the debris field which seconds before had been a real threat to end his time on the planet.

  Trask felt the outboard begin to shake; then the motor died. He looked at Aguilar with a question on his face.

  "You did nothing wrong, Jeff. It is out of fuel. I had no time to fill it before we left."

  Bef
ore Trask could respond with the very sharp words that were forming on his tongue, the Highway Patrol boat was pulling alongside them. A light from the larger craft illuminated the bass boat.

  "You seem to be taking on water there, skipper," Sergeant Jimmy Avila called down.

  Trask looked around the little boat. She had taken many more hits than he'd realized. A six inch gash had been cut toward the bow where some of the wood had been shot away. He looked down and saw that his bare feet were already ankle deep in water.

  "You'd all better come on up," Avila said, tossing down a chain ladder. "We'll try and tow her back, but odds are that sis here is gonna owe our daddy a new bass boat."

  Trask saw both Linda Aguilar and Lynn looking down at him. He followed Aguilar and their passenger up onto the gunboat. Avila was there with another trooper.

  "I saw all three batteries firing," Trask said.

  Linda smiled. "I was a gunnery officer in the Navy. Your wife can pull a trigger herself. The boat was short-handed, and we got drafted."

  "Everyone okay?" Avila asked. "I think we're fine, thanks to you," Trask said.

  "You're not, Jeff." Lynn slapped a towel onto the back of Trask's left shoulder. "You're bleeding like a stuck pig."

  "I think it's a wood splinter from the boat. I heard a round hit the back rail—"

  "That's no splinter," Avila said, shining a flashlight onto the wound. "It's a ricochet. Not deep. That hard old teak took a lot of the steam out of it. You're lucky." He looked at Lynn. "Keep some pressure on it."

  "We've got a prisoner over here, Sarge." Trask saw the trooper on the other side of the boat reach down and pull an exhausted figure over the rail. The man collapsed on the deck of the gunboat, muttering in Spanish. The patrolman was on him immediately, cuffing him.

  "What's he saying?" Trask asked Aguilar.

  Aguilar smiled. "El Ratón is very upset at our friend here for killing his brother. He also says that he cannot swim."

  Zapata, Texas

  November 26, 2012, 11:51 a.m.

  "There's some guy at the front door who's asking for you, Jeff," Lynn said. "Stuffed shirt type. He looks pissed."

  Trask got up from the recliner, wincing as he did so.

  "That actually hurts?" Lynn asked.

  "Yeah. I've never been shot before, you know."

  "Pull a stunt like that and it could happen again. Friendly fire."

  "Thank you for your support," he said.

  He steadied himself, took a deep breath, and headed for the front of the lake house. There were actually two stuffed shirts waiting for him at the doorway.

  "Are you Trask?" one of the men in a suit asked him.

  "Yes, and you are?"

  "Gordon Lovitt, Mr. Trask. I'm the chief of the criminal division in the US Attorney's Office for the Western District of Texas. Our offices are in San Antonio. This is AUSA Ward Walton."

  "Nice to meet you." Trask held out his hand, but none was offered in return. He shrugged and pulled it back. "Okay. What's up?"

  "What's up is we don't take too kindly to someone from Washington flying down here without any notice or coordination and getting involved in an international incident, kidnapping an international priority target defendant, and then thinking he's just going to whisk that defendant back to D.C. after we genuflect and hold a removal hearing for him. That's what's up, Trask."

  "I see." Trask turned back and called toward the rear of the house. "Jimmy?"

  Sgt. Avila walked up the hallway to join them. "Yeah, Jeff ?"

  "Sergeant, please tell these fine gentlemen what actually occurred last night while I make a quick phone call."

  Trask stepped back and listened to the conversation at the door while he punched the icon on the telephone.

  "We were in Texas waters, and came to the assistance of an American vessel which was under fire by pirates on Falcon Lake. Zeta pirates," Avila explained. "We pulled one out of the drink after we sank his boat."

  Trask waited for the secretary to patch him through.

  "Yes sir, I am a sergeant in the Highway Patrol, and I was the gunboat commander."

  "Thank you, sir," Trask spoke into the phone. "It will be just a minute." He turned back toward the front door.

  "No sir," Avila was saying. "It was my understanding that Mr. Trask was here for no other purpose than a well-deserved vacation. He's a family friend."

  "Let's cut to the chase, guys," Trask interrupted them. He handed the cell phone to Lovitt.

  "Who the hell is this?" Lovitt asked.

  "Some other Texan," Trask said. "The one who got your boss—the United States Attorney for the Western District of Texas—appointed to his current position."

  After an extended conversation in which Lovitt set what Trask figured was the world record for the number of times someone could say, "Yes, Senator Heidelberg," in a five-minute span, Lovitt handed the phone back.

  "I guess I didn't understand what happened here. Sorry, Mr. Trask. What can we do to help?"

  "You can take the copy of the now unsealed criminal complaint charging Ramón Domínguez with murder and drug conspiracy which you found on your fax machine this morning, give him his removal hearing, prove who he is with the help of the two witnesses who are in this very house and who are more than willing to testify, and get him on a con-air flight to Washington as soon as the United States Marshals Service can accommodate him. If you would be so kind?"

  "Certainly. Happy to help."

  "I thought you might be."

  "Anything else?"

  "Yeah. You can expect a motion to oppose removal and transfer to D.C. based upon the same silly allegations that you've apparently already heard from some cartel mouthpiece defense attorney—you know, that Dominguez was kidnapped and all that rot?"

  "Yes."

  "You might want to re-acquaint yourself with the Ker-Frisbie doctrine before the hearing, Gordon. I'm sure you've heard of it. That's the line of Supreme Court cases holding that it doesn't even matter if we did kidnap that murdering slug, even though we didn't. All that matters is that he was found in a territory within the jurisdiction of the United States. The courts don't give a damn how he got here. I'm sure you remember those cases from your Constitutional Law course."

  "Yes, of course. Glad to help."

  "Thanks very much."

  Trask watched as Lovitt and Walton drove away.

  Lynn was standing behind him. "The Ker-Frisbie doctrine? Did you just make that up?"

  "Actually, no. The cases are Ker v. Illinois and Frisbie v. Collins. Decided in 1886 and 1952, respectively. Once in a while the Supremes get something right."

  FBI Field Office

  Washington, D.C.

  November 30, 2012, 8:45 a.m.

  "Did we get the indictment returned?" Carter asked.

  "Yep," Trask replied. "About four o'clock yesterday. The grand jury certainly had no trouble with it. Once our Mexican spy friend told them his story, I think they were ready to convict Dominguez on the spot. Unfortunately, we have to wait for a trial jury to do that."

  "If it's the same story he told me, that's certainly understandable," Wisniewski said.

  "We're still weak on the dope conspiracy in one area," Trask said. "Miguel the spy said he has seen Dominguez handle everything related to the China White from the harvesting of the poppies in Colombia to processing the paste in Mexico. He's helped pack the stuff in vehicles to get it through the border checkpoints. He only came across with it once, however.

  "Our linkage gets pretty thin between the border and the District. The photos of the truck at the racquet club provide some connection, since we found some dope there, and since Dominguez loaded the same truck with the bomb. It's still thin, though. It was good for the grand jury but the standards of proof are a lot higher at trial. We may have to offer that skunk Adipietro a sweetened deal to get him to testify."

  "Maybe not." Lynn walked in with a small stack of papers in her hand. "I had your man Miguel—or whatever his
real name is—point out the ranch he said he went to in Laredo, you know, the staging point where they handed off the heroin. I brought it up on a satellite map and Miguel was certain it was the right place. I ran the property records. The ranch is owned by a Frank Aurrichio. He was originally a stockbroker from New York. He moved to Laredo a few years back."

  "So now all we have to do is find your Mr. Aurrichio—" Doroz said.

  "Already found him," Lynn said. "He's pending trial in the Eastern District of New York. They have him in custody."

  "What are the charges?" Doroz asked.

  "Distribution of heroin, possession of heroin with intent to distribute, and possession of a firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking. I called Brooklyn. DEA did a few undercover buys and then hit him with a search warrant. He was holding eight pounds."

  "I could kiss you," Trask said to Lynn.

  "We have a license that says you can do that," she replied.

  "Road trip," Wisniewski said. "I called it first."

  "Approved," Doroz said. "You too, Dix."

  "What's the offer?" Carter asked Trask.

  "How old is our Mr. Aurrichio, babe?" Trask asked Lynn.

  "Forty-nine."

  "Not a day less than twenty-five years. He's looking at that on the New York charges alone. I'll call my counterparts up there and grease this with them and his defense counsel. We'll do a two-for-one sale. He pleads there and we don't charge him here. It's basically the same thing we offered Briggs—a chance to die outside of prison if he lives that long."

  Doroz saw that Randi Rhodes was looking a bit lost. "Dix, take your other partner with you, too," he said, nodding in her direction. "Ever been to New York, Randi?"

  "Not until now," she said smiling.

  "I think we can save the taxpayers some money by just renting two hotel rooms," Carter said. "Tim and I can stay in one, and Randi can have the other one."

  "As if!" Lynn Trask laughed. "How could you even say that with a straight face, Dix?"

  "Two rooms are approved," Doroz said. "Occupancy to be determined by the travel party. Everybody get moving. We have work to do."

  "Bear, I need to speak with you and Jeff privately," Carter said. "My office then," Doroz replied.