That wasn’t how he’d planned to see the world when he was still in school, but what of it? He was a patriot from rock-ribbed Yankee stock and still believed ends justified the means.
Today he’d brought his service pistol to the hotel—a compact Glock 23 chambered in .40-caliber Smith & Wesson cartridges, standard issue for the field agents—never knowing what might happen when two hostile narcotrafficantes faced each other in the middle of a crisis with no one but a dodgy captain from the FIA serving as referee. So far today, the death toll in Juárez was twice the bloody usual, and it was still five hours till tomorrow.
Three grim faces turned in Jeffers’s direction as he walked up to their table, three pairs of suspicious eyes regarding him as a gringo outsider but perhaps a necessary evil in the present situation. Both cartel honchos had done their share of favors for the DEA, and vice versa, but they clearly didn’t want to be reminded of that now.
Everyone around the table knew each other as an enemy or necessary evil given Mexico’s system for doing business. There was no fake bonhomie, no hands offered for shaking, so Jeffers jumped straight into it, asking, “Who wants to fill me in?”
Captain Prieto did the honors, while Kuno Carillo and Rodolfo Garza glared daggers at each other. It was simple on the face of it: someone had hit facilities maintained by both cartels, with a substantial loss of cocaine, lives and property. Each cartel honcho blamed the other one for starting it, but neither would admit retaliating.
One weird twist: at each location, someone had left a note protruding from a dead soldier’s mouth with an identical demand.
Jeffers didn’t bother speaking to Prieto when his turn came, rather speaking to the mortal enemies from Sinaloa and Juárez. “So, let me get this straight,” he said. “You automatically blame each other for the raids, but have no proof on either side?”
Carillo snarled, “My proof is that he came into Chihuahua, fourteen hundred miles from home, and tried to steal my business out from under me.”
“Son of a whore!” Garza fired back. “There is enough for everyone.”
“So you won’t mind if I set up my headquarters in Sinaloa, eh, you stupid asshole?”
Both men pushed their chairs back, but Jeffers interrupted them before it came to blows or worse. “Hold on a second,” he chimed in. “Has anybody bothered to compare these notes?”
“I have them,” Prieto said, fishing out a plastic bag from somewhere underneath his jacket and sliding it across to Jeffers.
The DEA agent was grateful for the bag, considering where the two scraps of paper had been found. With cartel soldiers, who knew where their mouths had been? He poked and prodded it until the message written on both notes was visible.
“Block printing,” he observed, “so no comparison of handwriting. Were these checked for fingerprints?”
“None found,” Prieto confirmed.
“Okay,” Jeffers said. “I’m no graphologist, but if I had to guess, I’d say that one guy wrote both messages—or, rather, wrote the same one twice. It was a guy, yeah? Please don’t tell me that a skirt kicked all your soldiers’ asses.”
“He was seen at both places,” Prieto said. “Just a glimpse from survivors in a panic.”
“Right,” Jeffers stated. “Glimpses can get us started, though. Did they describe him as Mexican, a gringo, something else?”
“They can’t agree,” Prieto answered. “With the fear, the smoke and shooting...”
“Yeah, yeah. So it could be any guy.”
“No hombre negro,” Carillo interjected sullenly.
“Right. Thanks for that,” Jeffers replied. “So here’s my question, before you start killing each other and your business goes into the crapper. Why the notes?”
“¿Por qué?” Garza was fairly sneering at him. “For confusion. What you call deniability.”
“Uh-huh.” Jeffers forced a grin. “You two have hated each other for...how many years? Forget that, it’s rhetorical. I’m asking why this bullshit with the notes? Who’s missing from one cartel or the other? Anybody? If not, to me that only says one thing.”
“And what is that?” Prieto asked.
“Somebody else,” Jeffers said. “Somebody or some outfit from outside, who thinks one of you pulled a snatch, but they don’t yet know who did it.”
Carillo threw down a tequila shot, grimaced and said, “My men have kidnapped no one. Not recently, at least.”
“Nor mine,” Garza added.
“Okay, we’re getting somewhere,” Jeffers said. “Now all we need to figure out is who grabbed who or, failing that, who’s recently dropped out of sight for no clear reason.”
“In Juárez?” Prieto asked, not quite scoffing. “We record an average one thousand people missing every year.”
“I’m not talking about prostitutes or somebody who hooked up with a coyote and went north,” Jeffers said. “First thing, the notes say, ‘Give him back.’ Forget about las chicas. Someone’s looking for a man, and an important one, worth risking all-out war.”
The captain shook his head. “I still don’t see—”
“And finally, he doesn’t say that he went missing from Juárez.”
Prieto blinked then motioned for a waitress, telling all of them, “I think we need more drinks.”
Calle Navojoa
“I don’t like this,” Sergeant Pedro Solana said.
Standing beside him, Sergeant Esteban Allende nodded. “Me, neither.”
“Bernal didn’t tell you why he wants to meet in La Montada?”
They’d been over this already, but Solana thought it couldn’t hurt to double-check.
“No reason,” Allende said. “I told you that.”
“Yes. It’s strange, that’s all.”
“What isn’t strange with Bernal, my friend?”
“That’s true.” Solana might’ve laughed but he was too nervous.
It made no sense, meeting Lieutenant Bernal in this run-down neighborhood, outside a derelict autobody shop, on what Bernal had called important business. Why not simply meet downtown at headquarters? Solana feared a trap, and he had said so to Allende, but what other option did they have?
He unbuttoned his jacket, making access to his pistol easier. “This dump would be a good place for a dirty trick.”
“What kind of dirty trick?” Solana asked, although he had some ideas of his own.
Allende shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe Prieto’s still pissed off about the gringo.”
“We took care of that, exactly as he ordered,” Solana said.
“Yeah, Pedro. But you know the captain, eh? His mood swings like my dick.”
That did make Solana crack a smile. “You’re saying that he has a tiny mood?”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t quit my day job to be a comedian.”
“You’ll laugh later,” Solana said.
“Only if I’m laughing at your face.”
Before Solana could reply, headlights swept over them, a dark sedan approaching slowly, turning in to the body shop’s large parking lot. Solana couldn’t see the driver’s face, obscured by tinted glass, but anyone with half a brain would recognize the unmarked FIA sedan, complete with whip antenna rising from its trunk. It was no great surprise when Silvio Bernal climbed from the driver’s seat, but Solana was confused at finding him alone.
Allende beat him to the question, asking their lieutenant, “Where’s the captain?”
“On his way,” Bernal assured them. “He got tied up with this cartel business.”
“We heard about that on the radio,” Allende said. “Sounds like a massacre.”
“Shit happens,” Bernal said. “Come on around with me, in back. Let’s go inside.”
Solana followed the lieutenant, Allende falling into step beside him. When they’d reached the backside of the one-time
body shop, Bernal produced a key that fit the back door’s dead bolt, opened it and let them pass inside ahead of him. He found a light switch, flicked it on, and old fluorescent fixtures caked with dust sputtered to life across the ceiling—some of them at least.
The place had been picked clean when its proprietor moved out, except for some unwanted odds and ends, including half a dozen metal folding chairs standing propped up against a wooden service counter. The only decoration on its walls was a nude calendar pinned open to October 2002. The model’s face was painted as a skull to honor the Day of the Dead.
Solana grimaced. He could have gone all night without that image in his head.
Bernal picked up a folding chair in each hand, brought them back to his subordinates, and said, “We may as well be comfortable while we wait, eh?”
“If I’d known it was a party,” Allende said, “I’d have brought beer.”
Bernal smiled then went back to the dusty counter, as if to retrieve another chair. Instead, though, when he turned to face the sergeants, both with hands full opening their own chairs, he was leveling a pistol at a space midway between them.
“What’s this shit?” Allende demanded, reaching for his weapon too late.
“Don’t waste your time,” Bernal advised. “Captain Prieto wants to talk, but if you push it, he’ll settle for one of you. I don’t care which.”
“What’s this about?” Solana asked.
“Use your imagination, eh? But first, take off your jackets, then unholster your pistols, set them on the floor and kick them over here. Allende first. No tricks, now, if you want to see another sunrise.”
When they’d both obeyed that order and then turned out their trouser pockets to prove they had no knives or other hidden weapons, Bernal turned his eyes and pistol toward Allende. “You, sit down.”
Allende sat and Bernal kept him covered while he told Solana, “Take the handcuffs from his belt. Fasten his hands behind him, and make sure it loops around the stile, so that he can’t stand without dragging the chair along.”
Solana didn’t understand him. “Style? What are you saying?”
“Stile, stupid,” Bernal replied then spelled it out for him. “The frame around the backrest. Choose whichever side you like and make the cuffs tight.”
Solana did as he was told and muttered an apology to Allende.
“It’s too late now for sorry,” his partner replied.
“Good work,” the lieutenant said. “Now, toss your cuffs to me and have a seat.”
Solana palmed his handcuffs, throwing them to Bernal underhand, and was a bit surprised to see him snatch them from midair. As the sergeant took his seat, Bernal advanced, his Heckler & Koch USP-45 aimed from the hip, leveled at Solana’s face.
Bernal gave him a wide berth, only stopping when he’d passed from view to say, “Lean forward, stretching out your hands behind you, one under the backrest.”
Solana felt an urge to curse or scream as one cuff fastened tightly on his left wrist then Bernal dragged him halfway around to clamp the other on the right. When he was done, Solana couldn’t comfortably turn to see Allende, seated five or six feet to his right.
“No good?” Bernal asked almost tauntingly. “Feel free to scoot the chair around and face your partner if you wish.” When Solana hesitated, the lieutenant urged, “Go on, asshole. When the captain gets here, he’ll insist you watch him work.”
Feeling he had nothing to lose, Solana said, “We only did as we were told, Bernal.”
“Oh, yeah? Who told you to bring back the wrong gringo, Sergeant? Did you think that any white man snatched from the hotel would satisfy the captain? He sends you out for prime rib and you bring him tripe. But even then, he let you have a chance to tidy up your mess.”
“And that’s exactly what we did!” Allende interjected, sounding desperate.
“Then where is he?”
“We gave him to El Psicópata as demanded,” Allende replied. “No one said we should wait and take him somewhere else after the freak was finished with him.”
“Save your breath,” Bernal suggested. “You’ll be needing it to tell the captain how this isn’t all your fault.” He paused, turned toward the exit as a car door slammed outside, then said, “That should be him.”
Chapter Six
Bulevar Miguel de la Madrid
Bolan had listened to Vergara’s story, pondering, as one grim detail piled atop another, if it was the worst tale he’d ever heard and deciding that it wasn’t even close.
But it was bad enough, and then some.
During Bolan’s lifelong war, he’d killed countless enemies. The number on his final FBI Most Wanted poster, prior to his stage-managed death in Central Park, had blamed him for the murders of one thousand Mafiosi and their cohorts, more or less. He viewed those homicides as justified—indeed, essential, for the preservation of a somewhat civilized society—but gunsights hadn’t framed his only views of mayhem through the years.
In Bolan’s time, he’d seen the aftermath of wholesale massacres, terrorist bombings and the smoky ruin of an airliner he’d wrecked with sniper fire in Vegas on a runway at McCarran International Airport. He’d lost good friends and lovers in the process, some to mercifully quick gunshot wounds, others tortured till their minds snapped and their bodies hardly qualified as human. He’d seen decorated cops moonlight as hit men and trained soldiers turned to homicidal rogues.
But this...
It was no secret that police routinely dealt with felons, sometimes pampering them in exchange for information leading bigger, badder fish into the net. But never had he heard of so-called lawmen forging an alliance with a murderer of hapless victims in the dozens, maybe more, while that ghoul repaid their generosity by taking witnesses and others marked by lawmen as their enemies, making them disappear or marking them in imitation of his own twisted proclivities.
“And you can’t point me toward this freak?” he asked Vergara.
“No one can identify him except those who use him,” the sergeant replied. “Assuming that the story’s even true, of course.”
“But you believe it.”
“Sí. Last year, in July, I cultivated an informant from a brothel in the district called Colonia Azteca. She lived at the brothel, working nights. Some of her clients, she said, were policemen—and high-ranking officers among them, from the FIA. I managed to obtain a mini camera and booked an hour with her, showed her how to use it and remove the photo card, preserving evidence for use in court.”
“And then?” Bolan prodded.
“Within a week she turned up dead, dumped at a landfill, mutilated in a fashion homicide detectives and the media attribute to El Psicópata.”
“No coincidence, I take it?”
“None in my mind. Lola only dealt with customers in-house, and never on the streets.”
“So someone caught her with the camera or worked it out some other way and set her up.”
“But she was not killed at the brothel, where there might be witnesses. She had one day off from the customers, on Sunday, when she went to church.”
Bolan ignored the irony of that, saying, “Your local law’s been hunting for this ghoul for...what, ten years now? More?”
“Half-heartedly, I’d say.”
“Okay. I’ll buy that. But it still puts me no closer to the guy.”
“I may have one thing,” Vergara said.
“So, spill it.”
“One of her customers—you call them Johnnies?”
“Close enough.”
“Bien. This one, when he was drinking, liked to brag about his rank. He was a captain, showed Lola his FIA badge, though he wouldn’t let her see his ID card.”
“I got that part. So what?”
“She never knew his full name, but she heard the brothel’s owner call him Señor Apretado.
”
“And...?”
“Apretato is our word for ‘tight,’ in this case used, as Lola said, because the captain was tight-fisted, seldom spending any money at the brothel. He expected service to be free.”
“I’m still not getting it,” Bolan replied.
“You’d have to know that Apretato is a name unknown in Mexico. However, we have yet another word for tight—prieto. It’s a fairly popular surname, which may mean ‘black’ or ‘dark’ as well as ‘tight.’”
“And you think, if you find a captain named Prieto working for the FIA—”
“Perhaps. In fact, I have.”
Pemex District
Over time, lying immobilized in clothing long since soiled, Brognola had begun to pick out odors separate from the pervasive smells of dust and clamminess distinguishing his prison cell, reminding him that there was still a world outside.
At one point he had caught the scent of something cooking—mostly onions and what he’d assumed were chili peppers—plus the sounds of human movement overhead. In other circumstances, Brognola might have called out for help, hoping his voice would echo through the ceiling that was someone else’s floor, but logic told him he had no friends in this building, only enemies. The cook and whoever he planned to feed, if he was not alone upstairs, might punish him for calling out. If not, unless they feared neighbors, they’d likely let him scream himself hoarse while they chuckled over his predicament.
Another smell, more difficult to classify, came from outside, somewhere beyond the building where he was confined. After a half hour or so, he’d pegged it generally as petroleum, a mix of chemical aromas—oil and gasoline at least, perhaps some diesel fuel—that reminded him of service stations and refineries. That was enlightening, might even help him pinpoint his location later if he managed to escape, but at the moment it did nothing to assist his breaking out.
Time lost all meaning as he lay there, strapped down on his back, first raging at his impotence then hoping Helen was all right and that she’d found some way to tell their grown-up children he was missing.
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