When contact was ignited, I got my answer about the Dazer’s effectiveness. The pandillero was stunned.
In Calavero’s corneal reflection, I saw a bolt of green fire that flared like a welding torch. There was an instant of shocked silence, Calavero’s eyes wide, his face contorted, then a scream as he released his grip on me and tried to claw his eyes free of the pain.
I jumped to my feet, hearing Dedos yelling, “Pull him out from behind the truck, I’ll shoot him!”
The partner was armed now, I realized. I couldn’t deal with both men at the same time, so I ducked low behind the door, holding the Dazer like a roll of quarters. I drew my arm back and swung hard from the hips, hitting Calavero twice in the ribs with my fist, hearing the distinctive pop of thin bones breaking.
Making a grotesque wheezing noise, the man collapsed beneath my left arm, blind and unable to take a full breath. To make sure he was disabled, I gave his eyes another laser burst, his scream not so loud this time because he was semiconscious.
It took a moment to balance Calavero’s body against my chest, then get the Dazer positioned correctly in my right hand. When I was ready, I dragged Calavero away from the door, using him as a shield, until I had a clear view of his partner, Dedos, who had taken a few steps back.
The man was crouched in a shooter’s stance, hands gripping a black semiauto pistol. Its laser sight created a smoky red beam that I realized connected the pistol with a dot that painted my forehead. I ducked lower, closer to the door, as the beam bounced, then searched for me.
Dedos’s hands weren’t steady. He was probably spooked by how easily I had disabled his partner. Yes ... that was the reason, because he decided to bargain.
“Man, I don’t want this kind of trouble,” he called to me. “Tell you what. You throw that green-light thing you got on the ground, I’ll do the same. I promise, man. You can stand up now—seriously. You want, I’ll count to three. I count to three, we both throw our shit on the road at the same time. How about that?”
From behind the door, I said, “I don’t want to have to kill you. Put your weapon on the ground and put your hands behind your head. Show me your hands, you won’t get hurt.”
The man answered with a forced laugh, saying, “You sound like a cop, the way you say that. But you ain’t no cop. You just a cowboy redneck, talking big.”
I didn’t respond. Instead, I switched the Dazer’s range to close-quarters combat, then took a second to check Calavero’s pockets. I found an ornate pocketknife and the VHF radio—lucky for me because I realized that the volume had been turned low. I adjusted the volume so I could hear the pandilleros’ friends if they called, then jammed the knife and the radio in a pocket of my fishing khakis.
A moment later, Dedos hollered, “Kill me with a light, man? How dumb you think I am? A light can’t kill nobody, man!”
I’d kept my left arm locked around Calavero’s throat. To keep him from responding, I squeezed his windpipe closed as I replied to Dedos, saying, “Then why’s your friend dead? You tell me.”
Calavero’s body thrashed briefly until I reduced pressure, listening for his partner’s quiet feet. I heard nothing, so I risked a look.
With one eye to the driver’s-side window, I watched Dedos take another nervous step backward before he yelled in Spanish, “Calavero, hey! You okay? Answer me.”
I watched until I saw that Dedos had lowered his weapon just enough for me to make a move. Using the door as a shield, I stood, aimed the Dazer at the man’s face and pressed the button. As I did, I averted my own eyes, but not until I witnessed Dedos’s face contorted by a searing, ocular virescence. It was simultaneous with his shrill scream.
The pistol went flying as Dedos covered his eyes. It didn’t help because I kept the laser beam focused on his face, using the door to steady my aim. Dazer literature claims that green is four times more visible to the human eye than other colors. It claims that a laser of this wattage could pierce human flesh, including finger and eyelids.
“It feels like a knife through the orbital socket,” one of the Dazer techs—who had experienced the pain—told me. At the time, I had assumed it was a mild exaggeration to get me interested in testing the company’s product.
I believed the tech now, particularly when Dedos began to roll on the ground. After a few seconds, he gagged and then vomited. Nausea is a common reaction to being blinded by the laser, according to what I had been told.
I felt confident enough to take a quick look at my shoulder. The dart had plowed a small furrow of flesh. It was bleeding but not badly. Next, I switched off the Dazer long enough to crawl into the truck and grab my equipment bag. In those few seconds, I formulated a plan. I needed information now. Where was Tula Choimha? If the men didn’t volunteer that information, I would have to force it out of them.
And I knew exactly how to make that happen.
Bag over my shoulder, I dragged Calavero to the front of my truck, positioning his head under the bumper. Alternately, I zapped both men with the laser even though they showed no readiness to fight back.
Next, I kicked Dedos’s pistol away, then dragged him near his partner, but closer to my truck’s right front tire. When he saw where I’d positioned him, the man became combative. To quiet him, I hammered my elbow into his nose. After one blow, Dedos pretended to be unconscious.
Then I stood and looked far down the road, first to the west, then to the east. How close would a driver have to be before he noticed the two men?
Not very close, I decided, which told me I needed to get moving When the pandilleros had first attacked me, I’d desperately hoped a car would turn down this remote road. Not now. An eyewitness was the last thing I wanted. Unless I was willing to detain an innocent passerby, the plan forming in my head would have to be abandoned.
I didn’t want to risk making that decision. Not that I was incapable of eliminating an eyewitness—I have done it before in my life. But I have never taken the life of a wholly innocent witness. Not knowingly, anyway. And never, ever in my own country.
“What have you done to my eyes?” Calavero moaned as I used duct tape on his ankles, then his wrists.
“Maybe this will help,” I replied, then stripped off more tape and wrapped it around his head as a blindfold.
When I had both men bound, I repositioned them so they could both feel next to their faces the tread of my front tires. My truck was still running, which scared them. Even though they lapsed into a machismo silence, their expressions were easy enough to read in the headlights.
I knew that what the pandilleros were imagining was far more terrifying than what they would have experienced had I not taped their eyes. Which was all part of the plan.
I had set up a variation of an interrogation technique that, unlike waterboarding, is unknown to the public. I had been with a special ops team years ago in Libya when I witnessed just how effective—and fast—the technique was at extracting information from an enemy.
I knelt between the men and spoke in English, saying, “I’ll give you one chance to answer questions. Refuse, get smart with me, I’ll crush your heads with the truck. If you lie, same thing. You’re road-kill. I’ll leave you here for vultures.”
“Don’t tell him anything,” Calavero said to his partner in fast Spanish. “His voice is different now, hear the difference? The accent. He is a cop. But he’s not going to hurt us. Cops aren’t allowed to hurt people in the States, you’ll see.”
Dedos didn’t sound convinced when he answered, “My nose is broken, man, I could strangle on my own blood if he doesn’t let me sit up.” Then in English he added, speaking to me, “We don’t know anything! But what do you want to know? Hurry up, I’m dying here!”
I asked the men about the girl. I asked about Harris Squires. I asked how many more of their gangbanger friends were waiting down this rutted drive?
Their reply was a smug silence that infuriated me. Two punks, secure in the rights guaranteed by their adopted country, were pla
ying hardass. Two bottom-feeders who profited from the misery of others, dealers of drugs and flesh.
I zapped them both with the Dazer, but the duct tape mitigated the pain. I leaned closer and lasered them again, but they only squirmed and thrashed their heads in response.
“Why is this asshole doing this to us?” Dedos yelled in Spanish, getting mad. “I’m going to die, I’m choking! Even if he is a cop, how’s he know so much about Squires and the little virgin?”
Voice steady, Calavero replied, “Shut up. The V-man will have us out of jail by morning. Tell him anything, you’re dead, pendejo.”
Dedos’s words, “the little virgin,” answered one of my questions. It told me that Tula Choimha was here and maybe still alive. Or had been, the last time these two saw her. Which couldn’t have been long ago. According to Melinski, Squires and the girl had left Immokalee a little before eleven p.m.
I checked my watch. Midnight.
I was tempted to drag the two into the ditch and get moving, but I had to have more information. How many pandilleros and how were they armed? Was Squires a captive or working with the gang?
Calavero was telling Dedos, “My ribs are broken, you don’t hear me whining, you pathetic woman—” when I interrupted him, saying in English, “No more talk. You have five seconds to answer my questions.”
I began counting as I squatted to confirm the heads of both men were positioned directly in front of my tires.
“Why are you doing this? Who are you?” Dedos wailed, coughing blood as he tried to sit up.
With my foot, I forced the man to the ground. Then gave it a beat before I told them both in Spanish, “No more time. You assholes have no idea who I am. But you’re about to find out.” To convince them my Spanish was good, I added an insult that’s common in Mexico.
I heard Calavero swear, groaning, “The Gomer understood us. Everything we said!” as I swung into the truck, limping a little because my leg muscles were beginning to knot from being kicked.
As I positioned myself behind the wheel, the VHF radio beside me crackled, and I adjusted the squelch to hear, “Calavero! Get your fingers out of your ass. Why haven’t you called?”
I hit the button and replied, “I tried. Where were you?”
“Don’t give me your shit. What happened to the Gomer? That’s all I want to know.”
I kept the radio a foot from my mouth and tried to make my voice higher and hoarser, to imitate Calavero. “Dedos is an idiot, but the white guy is gone. How much longer?”
I didn’t want to risk his suspicion by saying more.
The man—Chapo, I guessed—was suspicious anyway.
“What’s wrong with your voice? You sound different.”
I snapped, “I’m bored shitless, I’m thirsty. Maybe you’d rather talk to Dedos.”
The voice paused ... more suspicious now? Even when the man laughed, saying, “Dedos is an asshole. What else is new?” I wasn’t convinced.
I kept an eye on the wooded road, expecting Chapo, or his partners, to come and check things out for themselves.
The interrogation technique we’d used in Libya is called the Spare Tire Switch, although I have never heard the term again as it relates to intelligence gathering. It was called that by CIA officers running the operation—presumably CIA, because such information is never offered.
A spare tire, handled by two quiet men, is bumped against the head of a blindfolded enemy. A third team member sits next to them in a truck, engine running, that alternately accelerates, then decelerates, as the spare tire rocks in sync, as if attempting to climb over the enemy’s face.
The interrogation subject, of course, doesn’t know it’s a spare tire. He’s convinced he is lying under the truck. It is a powerful motivator.
My variation worked well.
When I got my truck into first gear, I accelerated slowly forward until I felt the first hint of resistance. It was accompanied by a duo of howls from Dedos and Calavero.
Instantly, I shifted to neutral, then stepped quietly out of the truck.
Using my left hand on the doorframe, my right on the accelerator, I began to rock the truck forward and back. With my hand, I added more gas with each forward thrust. The terror the two men endured—and the pain they imagined—was caused by the engine noise that grew progressively louder. It was the noise that convinced them their skulls were about to crack like eggs.
After just a few seconds of this, Calavero was begging me to stop.
“Anything,” he pleaded, “I’ll tell you anything.”
He did, too. But he wasn’t nearly as eager to share as Dedos, who I had to threaten just to shut him up.
“Crazy with fear” is just a cliché—until you have actually interacted with someone whose brain has been addled by terror. They weep, they slobber. Their sense of time and balance has been scrambled.
“Sick with fear” is another cliché, yet it accurately described the visceral dread I felt after what the two men confessed to me.
They were members of the Latin Kings. The Kings were killers and proud of it. Members were holding Squires and the girl captive at a hunting camp that consisted of an RV and a couple of outbuildings, half a mile away through the woods. There, a man named Victorino—a Latin King captain—and a woman called Frankie were filming a sex video, using Tula Choimha as their victim.
It made no sense to me when Dedos explained that the woman was Squires’s girlfriend, but I didn’t press for details. I grabbed the radio after a moment of indecision, pressed the transmit button and called, “Chapo! Stop everything! I think maybe the cops are here. Chapo?”
I waited ... called again, but no reply. It was maddening.
Dedos referred to the girl as la chula virgen. The Mexican slang he used to describe how she would be raped was particularly disgusting: Romper el tamor con sangre.
His boss was going to bust through the girl’s screen in search of blood.
Equally disgusting was the indifference with which Dedos offered details. He wasn’t referring to a teenage girl. He was discussing a worthless object, a young Guatemalan, no better than an animal.
It was not uncommon in the racial hierarchy of Mexican gangs. He mentioned Tula, in fact, as an unimportant aside after Calavero had told me about Harris Squires.
“This person—we call him jelly boy—he disrespected the reputation of our organization,” Calavero said. “For this, he is being punished. How, I do not know. That is up to our jefe. Now, stop this bullshit! Arrest us, if you want. We’ll be out by tomorrow, what do I care? I’m not guilty of anything but being too stupid to kill you when I had the chance.”
Calavero was lying about Squires, and I knew it. When I threatened to put them under the truck again, Dedos was more forthcoming. Squires was to be the victim in a snuff film, he said. With a camera rolling, Squires would be murdered—“Slow, like a kind of ceremony,” Dedos said—then his body would be burned.
“If he’s still alive,” Dedos added. “He attacked the V-man, so the V-man shot him in self-defense. With a shotgun, but I don’t know how bad. When they sent us out to watch the road, jelly boy was still alive. He was bleeding from the face and chest, but the man is big as a mountain, so who knows? I only do what I am told. I have nothing to do with anything that happens at the hunting camp.”
It was then that Dedos told me about the girl.
That’s when I tried the radio. Then again.
Nothing but static.
I felt a panicked need to hurry even though I was unclear about the timing. Had Tula already been raped or was it happening now? More threats didn’t make it any clearer, and I couldn’t waste any more time.
Shock affects different people in different ways. Into my mind came an analytical clarity: I had to do whatever was required to help the girl—do it in a way that didn’t risk my future freedom, if possible, but saving the girl came first.
There is a maxim that applied. At least, I wanted it to apply, because it excused the extreme b
ehavior that might be required of me. An old friend and I had pounded out the truism together long ago in a distant jungle:
In any conflict, the boundaries of behavior are defined by the party who cares least about morality.
The Latin Kings cared nothing of morality. They’d made that clear.
I gave myself a second to review. No one knew I was here. The pandilleros had no idea who I was. They wouldn’t expect a hostile visitor, particularly someone with my training and background. And, tonight, there were no rules, no boundaries of behavior.
Thinking that transformed my strange, restless mood into a resolute calm. I had made the decision to act before giving it conscious thought. The decision tunneled my vision. Thoughts of legalities and guilt—even my fears for the girl—vanished. They were replaced by the necessity of operating in the moment. Of acting and reacting with an indifferent precision.
It was a familiar feeling, a cold clarity that originated from the very core of who I am. I might have been in North Africa or the jungles of Central America. Nothing existed but my targets—threats which I must now find and neutralize.
There were three targets, according to Dedos, not counting Squires or the woman named Frankie, whose role was still unclear. Two fellow gangbangers plus their boss, Victorino—or the V-man, as they called him. All men were armed with handguns and knives. Two carried fully automatic weapons—“T-9s,” Dedos told me.
He was referring to one of the cheapest machine pistols on the market, a Tec-9. Cheap or not, the thing could spit out twenty or thirty rounds in only a couple of seconds, then fire again with the quick change of a magazine.
Daunting. But yet another reason not to hesitate when my targets were in sight.
I was hurrying now, but methodically. From my equipment bag, I took a pair of leather gloves and put them on. The night was warm, but I pulled on a black watch cap, too. Roll it down, it became a ski mask.
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