The guy Piper had juiced with the Taser lay on the ground, twitching like an epileptic meth head as fifty thousand volts of electricity coursed through his body.
I pulled a strip of duct tape off the inside of my windbreaker and slapped it on my guy’s mouth. More tape was at the ready, precut, a quick and efficient field bandage for a bleeding GSW if it came to that.
Piper cuffed her prisoner, taped his lips shut.
A small camera was mounted over the doors, just below the eaves of the warehouse. The putty used to hide the wires was still fresh-looking, barely dried.
We were the only people visible on the street. A few cars were parked farther down, beyond where our Tahoe was hidden.
I trotted to the doors and jumped, smashed the camera with the butt of my MP5.
Piper moved to the side of the door and pulled a length of black nylon cord from a pocket of her windbreaker. She looped it around the door handle and then tossed me an olive-drab metal canister about the size of a beer can, a large pull ring on top.
A flashbang grenade, very loud and very bright, designed to disorient but not to wound.
“Take the lock.” She tightened her grip on the rope.
I switched the selector lever on my subgun to single shot, fired twice at the dead bolt.
She yanked the cord, jerked the door open.
A three-second fuse.
I pulled the ring, fast-counted onetwothree, and threw the grenade as far as possible inside, aiming for a long, high trajectory.
Piper kicked the door shut.
A nanosecond later a thunderclap erupted from the interior, and slivers of light strobed from the threshold gap.
Piper opened the door, and we dashed inside.
Dust and smoke. Dim light. The air reeked of explosive residue and mold.
The trailer from an eighteen-wheeler sat in the middle of the cavernous space. Open doors faced the entrance to the warehouse and displayed stacks of boxes with a familiar blue and green logo.
Neither of us spoke. Piper went to the right of the trailer, gun up; I headed left.
On my side a few feet away, a guy curled on the floor in the fetal position. He held his hands over his ears and rocked, moaning.
The other end of the trailer was in shadows.
Piper’s shoes scraped on concrete from the far side.
Then, her voice: “JON! TWELVE O’CLOCK.”
I shouldered the MP5.
A man in a dusty suit staggered into view, tie askew, a gun in one hand, maybe thirty feet away.
“Drop your weapon.” I drew a bead on the center of his chest. “Federal agent.”
He blinked, lurched toward me. He shook his head, worked his jaws, like he was trying to clear the pressure from his ears.
“DROP YOUR WEAPON.” I put the subgun’s sight on his middle button.
He fired without aiming. The bullet went wide, struck the wall behind me. The noise made him flinch. He kept walking, blinking, shaking his head.
“Can you hear me?” I tightened my finger on the trigger. “Put. Your weapon. Down.”
He let go of the gun and fell to his knees, hands over his ears.
I ran to where he knelt. He teetered, a glazed looked in his eyes. I threw him face down on the floor, bound his hands with a plastic zip tie. Then I trussed the first guy.
“Piper.” I stood. “We’re clear on the port side.”
“Starboard’s secure as well.” She appeared from the end where we’d entered.
The warehouse was a rectangular box, large enough to hold twenty trailers. Didn’t take long to determine there was nothing else in the structure except for two slightly deaf guards and the eighteen-wheeler full of stolen pharmaceuticals. No interior rooms or other hiding spots.
“Tag the shipment and call it in.” I pointed toward the other end of the warehouse. “I’m gonna clear the next room, the bar or whatever we saw from outside.”
To get credit for a bust, and to get paid, we had to mark the confiscated product with numbered stickers and call the real DEA as soon as possible. No call? No cash.
“Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “We go together.”
I started toward the front and then stopped. She was right. Safety trumped everything, especially when dealing with the ultraviolent cartels and no backup on the scene.
“Okay.” I motioned for her to get behind me. “I’ll take the point.”
We jogged to the other end of the huge open area, where the only other access point was a dead-bolted metal door. I shot the lock and kicked it open.
Piper went in first, back to the wall, subgun against her shoulder.
I followed, careful to keep the muzzle of my weapon from sweeping her body.
The room was dim, windows covered haphazardly by plywood on the outside, evidently the juke joint we’d seen when we first arrived.
In the middle of the floor sat a couple of cardboard boxes marked McCormack Pharmaceutical. They were next to an old, crumbling bar covered with hundreds of plastic bags that contained what looked like dried grass. The air smelled of mildew and herbs.
Piper looked through a gap in the window covering. “Nobody outside.”
“Secure the trailer.” I turned toward the shipment. “We’re still in hostile terri—”
The woman who stood in the doorway leading to the warehouse and the eighteen-wheeler didn’t look very dangerous, but you could never be too careful.
Piper and I aimed.
“DON’T MOVE.” I eased to one side, putting distance between my partner and myself.
The woman was about thirty, maybe Hispanic, maybe not. Expensive but filthy clothes. Black hair streaked with dust, olive skin over the high cheekbones of a fashion model. She was pretty except for the dirt on her face and terror in her eyes.
“Dónde estoy?” She blinked, licked cracked lips. Where am I?
“Sus manos,” Piper said. “Para arriba.” Hands up.
“I speak English.” The woman leaned against the wall. “Water. Do you have any?”
“What’s your name?” I said.
Her eyelids drooped. She fell to the ground.
Piper knelt beside the woman, felt for a heartbeat on her neck. “Pulse is weak and thready.”
“Gotta be a kidnapping,” I said.
The hostage business was a significant ancillary profit center for the narcotraffickers. We didn’t see it much this far north, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t going on.
“No-no-no-no.” The woman opened her eyes.
Her gaze locked on the badge dangling from Piper’s neck that had been covered by the windbreaker earlier.
“It’s okay.” Piper patted her arm. “We’ll get you to a hospital.”
“W-w-where am I?”
“Dallas,” I said. “We’re gonna call an ambulance. Everything will be all right.”
“No ambulance.” She shook her head. “No police.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
“You don’t understand.” She pushed herself up. “They will kill me.” She coughed and looked at each of us in turn. “They will kill you.”
“Put her in the Tahoe.” I looked at Piper. “Give her some water.”
“I’m calling in the shipment first.” Piper helped the kidnap victim to her feet and hit a few buttons on her cell phone, a text to our DEA supervisor.
A car door slammed outside.
The woman glanced at the front door of the bar and then at me, a terrified look on her face.
Another vehicle door slammed.
The woman staggered toward the back of the room but froze when the voices became clear on the other side of the bar’s door.
Men talking in Spanish, getting closer. No time for any of us to get out of the room.
Piper put away her cell phone and moved in front of the woman, gun raised toward the front door.
I hid in the corner and waited.
- CHAPTER SEVENTEEN -
A cou
ple of seconds later, I heard keys rattle, men talking.
The front door of the bar swung open. A shaft of light penetrated the darkened interior. It illuminated the stolen pharmaceuticals but missed me by a wide margin.
Two Hispanic guys in sweatpants and T-shirts, gang tattoos on their forearms, entered.
The last one was talking on a cell in Spanish. He locked the door from the inside.
“Don’t move.” I sprang from the corner, subgun up. “Policía.”
The first guy raised one hand but reached for his hip with the other.
The second kept his phone in place and groped under his shirt.
Piper fired a silenced round into a box of stolen drugs.
Gun smoke filled the room. Bits of cardboard floated in the air.
Both men surrendered, arms high. Cell Phone Guy dropped the weapon and cell.
“Hands on top of your head.” I swiveled the gun from man to man. “Both of you.”
“You’re making a big mistake,” Cell Phone Guy said.
“Levante sus manos para arriba.” Piper fired another silenced round into the carton of drugs.
Outside, another arrival. The screech of tires. More doors slammed. No time to properly search the two suspects.
The kidnapped woman backed against the far wall, shaking.
“On your knees.” I moved away from the entrance, attention split between the suspects and whoever else was outside. A dangerous situation.
We’d been lucky to catch the shipment after arrival but before the large-scale distribution began, a period when there had only been a minimal number of guards. The noise outside indicated our luck was changing.
“Quién está fuera?” Piper said. Who is outside?
Neither man answered. They kept their hands up but didn’t kneel.
The bar’s door splintered. A battering ram plunged inside.
Two guys in blue windbreakers and helmets, an entry team, darted into the bar, carrying submachine guns like mine. They wore thick leather gloves and eye protectors.
They were DEA. A short feeling of relief washed over me followed by a new fear: friendly fire.
I put myself in their heads, tried to see what they saw.
A dazed and disheveled woman crouched by a wall. Two lowlifes, hands up. And two people in dark clothes with weapons aimed in their general direction.
“Freeze.” The first one shouldered his gun, swept the room. “DEA agent.”
“I’m a cop, DEA too.” I dropped my MP5, let it dangle around my shoulder. Hands as high as they would go. “Don’t shoot.”
“NOBODY MOVE.” The second windbreaker was juiced on adrenaline, getting close to the kill-everybody-and-let-God-sort-them-out stage. He jumped to one side like we’d all been trained, covering his partner. He had several smoke grenades and tear gas canisters dangling off his utility belt. The explosive devices were easy to access, but carrying them that way was against the regulations.
“We’re all good here.” Piper held her hands up. “Everybody’s cool. Let’s not shoot.”
“DON’T MOVE!” The second agent began to shake, face red. He aimed at my nose.
I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
“Two fingers,” Windbreaker One said. “Index and thumb. Take the sling and drop the weapons on the floor, both of you.”
Piper and I did as requested, very slowly.
Windbreaker One picked up our subguns. “Who are you?”
“We’re DEA, same as you.” I pointed to the badge dangling around my neck. “Agent Jon Cantrell.”
Windbreaker One touched his lapel mic with his free hand and radioed: “Four hostiles plus the subject. Please advise.”
“Subject?” I said. “What the hell are you talking about?”
The woman from the shipment moaned. She crossed herself.
Windbreaker Two kept twitching. He lowered his weapon and took Piper’s MP5 from his colleague. He touched the peace symbol on the forearm with a gloved finger and giggled.
“Let me call my supervisor,” I said. “We can get this all straightened out.”
Windbreaker One’s radio sounded, words I couldn’t understand, something about “follow the special protocol.” He shrugged and nodded to his partner.
Windbreaker Two checked Piper’s gun for a round in the chamber. Then he shot both suspects in the head with the silenced weapon, one-two-thffpt-thffpt.
Blood and brain matter sprayed across the room as the powerful hollow points did their job. Brass clinked on the floor; the men fell over dead.
My jaw went slack, heart pounded. I struggled to catch my breath.
Windbreaker One smiled.
There’s one in every crowd, so the saying goes. In any organization, the individual who heads left when everybody else goes right, clueless to the group dynamics, the numbskull who sings when the rest of the crowd is humming. Eager, enthusiastic to a fault.
The military was full of people like that. Sometimes they’re called Gung Ho. Other times, crazy. “Dork” is a term that’s used a lot in civilian life.
Windbreaker Two was just such an individual.
Brimming with energy that bordered on the psychotic. Marching to the melody of a bugler that only he could hear.
He hopped from foot to foot, laughing as he stared at the two hoods he’d just shot with Piper’s gun.
“I love the smell of dead Mexicans in the morning.” He yanked a smoke grenade from his belt and held it upward like a sword. “Smells like… victory.”
“Y-y-you killed them.” The woman in the dirty clothes shook like it was cold in the room. “N-n-now you’re going to k-k-kill us.”
“We’ve got backup on the way,” Piper said. “You need to climb down from the crazy tree.”
“Bonus time, baby. We found the witness.” Windbreaker Two knelt beside the dead cartel soldiers, rummaged through their pockets.
“Please, let me go.” The woman fell to her knees. “I mean you no harm.”
Windbreaker One, the saner of the pair, smiled and looked at the woman in the dirty clothes.
“The Marshals got mucho dinero on your head.” He chuckled. “Plus, we get a big-ass incentive payment for being the first guys on the scene. No way we’re letting you go.”
Piper and I looked at the woman. A bounty on her? And these guys were contractors?
“What about us?” I said. “We’re credentialed. We’re cops like you.”
“You shot these lowlifes.” Windbreaker One shook his head. “I’m sure you can spin a good reason why to the Dallas police and the DA.”
“Don’t you just love it when you turn a bad guy into worm-dirt?” Windbreaker Two wagged the grenade in my face. “Feels like the world’s best boner.”
“Put that smoke bomb away, willya.” Windbreaker One looked at his colleague. “Remember what happened last ti—Ah, shit.”
A small pop followed by a large cloud of smoke.
“Uh-oh.” Windbreaker One dropped the canister. “So-orry.”
A dense gray fog filled the room, and visibility went from normal to nothing in about a half second.
Piper shouted something I couldn’t understand as the woman in the dirty clothes screamed.
A silenced round fired.
In the smoke, I could just make out the figure of Windbreaker One, the closest.
Every ounce of training I had ever received as a law enforcement officer came down to this one truism: Don’t shoot one of your own. So I was slow to reach for my Glock.
Windbreaker One didn’t hesitate. He jabbed my stomach with the muzzle of his MP5. The blow was so hard it felt like the metal of the gun connected with the bone of my spine.
I fell to the floor, tried to remember what breathing felt like.
Smoke and shouts and radio noise. More smoke.
I blacked out.
PART II
“America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our people.”
—President George W. Bush,
State of the Union Address, January 20, 2004
“Our values and our belief in God are what made this country great. And one of the values, I believe it’s in the Old Testament, is the right to defend ourselves. I’m not just talking about the Second Amendment—your viewers should know by now how I feel about that—I’m talking about our right as a country to defend and secure our borders… Yeah, I grew up poor, on the wrong side of the tracks in South Dallas. But one thing I learned in that environment was how to fight, and I am here now, ready to fight for the United States.”
—US Senator Stephen McNally,
The O’Reilly Factor, October 2011
- CHAPTER EIGHTEEN -
Late morning outside the warehouse in West Dallas.
The muggy air smelled like rotting garbage and diesel fuel. I imagined the stench of blood as well, even though the two dead bodies were inside.
The August sun broke through the scattered clouds long enough to heat up the crumbling asphalt where a half dozen white Tahoes were parked, grill-mounted lights flashing red. The SUVs were just like ours, police suspensions, blue-and-white government plates.
Crime scene tape secured the block and kept out the few locals curious about what was going down. Inside the tape were enough guys in dark suits, windbreakers, and sunglasses to make another Men in Black movie.
I stood with my back to the exterior wall of the bar, hands on top of my head, struggling to breathe. My Glock, badge, cell phone, and MP5 lay on the ground next to Piper’s subgun, the one used to kill the two thugs. Piper and the strange woman from the shipment had evidently escaped in the confusion.
Windbreakers One and Two were a few yards away by a Tahoe, filling out paperwork.
A guy I took to be their boss stood in front of me.
According to his tag and badge, he was a special agent with the DEA named Keith McCluskey. He was in his mid-thirties and looked like he hadn’t slept since grade school. He had a runny nose, and a portion of one eyebrow looked like it had been burned off. Sandy blond hair, lank and flat, tan skin that had gone pale, deep lines in his face.
But his eyes were alert, practically on fire, glowing in their darkened sockets.
Coke or meth? Probably the former, as his teeth looked to be in good condition. If that was the case, he wouldn’t be the first narcotics officer to succumb to the lure of the illicit stuff. Sure wouldn’t be the last.
The Contractors Page 10