by Bill King
“I’m with you, Frank,” said Cortez, his hands in his pockets, the toe of his right boot kicking the dirt in front of him, as if trying to uncover some clue to the paradox. “It could be that he was involved in something a lot more important than avenging this slight to his machismo.”
“Yeah, but what?” asked Janak, who was wearing a blue FBI windbreaker over his dress shirt and tie. He had left his suit jacket hanging in his office.
“My hunch is that they were carrying a bundle of cash, probably from a drug deal earlier that evening,” said Cortez. “I’d better do some work on my machismo. I must have looked like an easy mark they couldn’t pass up.”
“I’ll have my people check to see if there were any drug deals gone bad that night within fifty miles of here” said Diaz. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“Maybe they’re the same ones who torched that SUV,” said Janak. “I think that happened the same night.”
“Well, if we’re right, you can bet your sweet ass that whoever actually owned that money probably scared him a lot more than me killing his two compadres,” said Cortez.
◆◆◆
The tranquil scene on the banks of the Rio Grande was not quite as private as the three federal law enforcement officers might have believed. In fact, it was being projected, in real time, onto a large flat screen television mounted on the wall of an underground command center located on the south side of the border.
“I wonder who they are?” Graciela asked the two young women seated at the sleek console in front of her. “A border patrol agent and an FBI agent, judging by their clothing. I’m not sure about the other guy, the one in the blue jeans and ball cap. Pass along their photos to our contacts in the Border Patrol, as well as the Polícia Federal. I want to know who they are.”
“I can try to bring the drone in closer to see if we can pick up an audio feed,” said Mari Elena, the younger of the two women on the console.
“No, don’t bother,” said Graciela. “We’re still finetuning the technology to be able to do that, but it’ll probably take another week or so to get the proper standoff distance calibrated. Right now, we’d have to fly the drone in much too close in order to be able to pick up their conversation. I don’t want to tip off the gringos to our capabilities.”
“Si, Graciela.” Mari Elena was still in her teens and looked up to Graciela as a role model, an example of the possibilities if she worked hard and smart.
“Let them continue to think we’re all just ignorant, backward Mexicans,” said Graciela. “Their self-confident arrogance is our best weapon.”
◆◆◆
PART TWO
_______________________________________________
Upping the Ante
Chapter 12
THE TEMPERATURE IN CLEVELAND was in the low-fifties as Calderón and Anna, one of the two chemists on the M-28 team, walked one-behind-the-other through the massive revolving door and out onto the wide sidewalk that separated the thirteen-story Italian Renaissance-style building from the heavy traffic on Sixth Street. Completed in 1923, the imposing structure was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Venezuelan looked back at the building’s pink Etowah marble façade and the two statues by turn-of-the-century architectural sculptor Henry Hering that flanked either side of the entrance—Security, to the right, and Integrity, to the left. For a few brief seconds, he wished he did not have to inflict damage to such a magnificent structure.
Their assignment would not be easy. The Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank had been built to last for centuries and bringing it down would be no easy task. Fortunately for them, total destruction was not their mission, at least not this time. Shock and awe was. This was a terror mission, plain and simple. That was just as well, as it turned out.
He and Anna had spent the entire morning touring each of the building’s public spaces, probing for weaknesses they could exploit. The detailed plan they had all studied earlier that week at the Rancho—the one drawn up by two faculty colleagues of Umberto at Universidad Central de Venezuela—had turned out to be complete and utter garbage. To his mind, it seemed a perfect example of the absolute worthlessness of the intelligentsia when it came to anything practical. Calderón doubted that the plan would have been successful even as a suicide mission, which it most certainly was not. He would deal with them when he got back to Caracas. Pompous imbeciles.
“So, Anna, what do you think?” he asked, staring at the front entrance to the building. “If it were up to you, how would you do it? Where would you attack?”
She smiled nervously, flattered that he would ask her opinion. Despite his famously nasty temper, he generally seemed to treat the people who worked for him with respect. Well, that’s not entirely true. He treated the people he respected with respect. Those he didn’t respect tended to disappear without a trace.
“The security is very tight and getting a bomb inside would be next to impossible, at least for one of us to try to sneak it inside the building,” she replied, watching his eyes closely to gauge his reaction to what she was saying. She was extremely nervous at the moment. “Perhaps someone else will need to bring the bomb in for us. We could recruit a service vendor, or a maintenance contractor. Someone who typically brings boxes and packages into the bank.”
“Yes, but that would take time that we don’t have, as well as increase the risks and the possibility of failure,” he said, removing a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his dark blue sports coat, taking one out and lighting it. He turned his head to the left so as not to blow smoke in her direction. “We are not suicide bombers. We are soldiers in the revolutionary struggle and, like all good soldiers, one of our basic responsibilities is to maintain our fighting capability. We can’t do that if we’re dead.”
She looked at him, a quizzical look on her face.
“Don’t worry,” he said, the glimmer of a smile framing his lips. “We didn’t suddenly become overcautious cowards. To borrow a tactic from my days playing fútbol, we’re simply going to take what the defense gives us. So, since we don’t absolutely have to place the bomb inside the building, we won’t.”
They were standing next to the curb, directly in front of the Sixth Street entrance to the Federal Reserve building less than ten yards away. It was the same door they had just walked through when they exited the building. On the other side of that doorway was a vast, cavernous lobby area.
Calderón nodded in the direction of the entrance.
“We’ll park the vehicle right here, where we’re standing,” he said. “That simple technique has worked well for decades, so why try to make things more complicated than they already are?”
He glanced down at his wristwatch. “It’s almost one o’clock. The others should be waiting for us at the restaurant and we’ll discuss the plan then. Tomorrow will be the day.”
◆◆◆
FBI Special Agent Reggie Calhoun was sitting in Bobby Janak’s office when Cortez and Diaz arrived. He was on the short side—maybe five-nine at the most—and slightly overweight, probably because he had been riding a desk in Washington for the past six years. His dark suit jacket, which looked like he had bought it about twenty pounds ago, fit tightly on his shoulders and, when he stood to greet them, it was open in the front.
“I’m Reggie Calhoun from the Washington office,” he said somewhat formally. He shook hands with both men. “I’d like to speak with both of you about the incident that occurred last week along the river, in which two young men were killed.”
Cortez exhaled slowly and nodded his head. Actually, he had been expecting Calhoun to show up yesterday.
“Special Agent Cortez, I’ll begin with you,” he said, before turning his head toward Janak. “Is there a private room where Cortez and I can speak?”
“Sure, you can use one of the interrogation rooms down the hall,” said Janak, placing his hand on Calhoun’s back and guiding him toward the door. “Follow me.”
The interrogation room was ten-by-t
en but felt even smaller. Calhoun wordlessly motioned for Cortez to sit down. They were seated opposite each other at the small rectangular table in the center of the room. Cortez was facing a large one-way mirror, the same kind he had stood behind thousands of times before while observing interrogations.
This time, though, he was the subject of the questioning.
For the first time since the incident on the river, he was scared. Not only was he scared for his future with the FBI, but also about the very real possibility the Bureau might make an example of him. He began to realize that prison, while probably not a likelihood, was at least a possibility.
He wondered who was on the other side of the mirror. Did Calhoun bring other people from Washington with him or was he the only one here this time? Resources tell a person a lot about intentions and commitment.
The man from DC signaled for the technician behind of the one-way mirror to begin recording and, for the next ninety minutes, Cortez went through the details of that early morning encounter with the three presumed Mexican drug traffickers. Every so often, Calhoun would interrupt him with questions eliciting more detail.
There was no clock on the wall, but Cortez was permitted to wear his wristwatch. It was just past eleven-thirty when Calhoun signaled that the interview was over, at least for now.
“Thank you very much for your candor, Agent Cortez. I will probably want to talk with you again, after I have spoken to Agent Diaz and gone out to the site to take a good look around. You can continue on with your normal business, but please don’t leave Laredo without letting me know.”
The agent from headquarters remained seated while he turned his head around toward the one-way mirror and called out to an unseen person behind the glass mirror.
“You can send in Agent Diaz now.”
◆◆◆
That night, they the M-28 team stole an old Dodge delivery truck from a cleaning supply company and drove it across town to a grimy-looking body shop in an older industrial area that the Frenchman had secured through one of his contacts in the Cleveland underworld.
One of the Venezuelans, a muscular man named Rodrigo whose main attribute was his brawn and not his brain, removed the old license plates from the truck. Screwdriver in hand, he replaced them with a set of plates he had stolen earlier that afternoon from a car parked in one of the long-term satellite parking lots out by the airport.
Two heavily tattooed men, each armed with an electric sander, removed the signage from the exterior of the stolen van and replaced it with vinyl signage that included the logo and lettering for a fictitious office supply company. One of the tattooed men, the one they called Red, was the owner of the body shop. He had closed up the shop for the day an hour earlier, and he and one of his mechanics had stuck around, waiting for the Venezuelans. The rest of his employees had gone home for the night.
They were meticulous and made quick work of their task, having done essentially the same kind of job hundreds of times in the past…mostly legally but sometimes not. Had they had enough time, they would have completely repainted the vehicle, too, but the van needed to be ready to go first thing in the morning, so Fósforo decided not to repaint…just a little touch up here and there.
Anna and Claudio, the two chemists, then carefully loaded the bomb into the van and hooked up the remote-control detonator.
By eleven o’clock, satisfied their work was done and that everything was ready, they called it a night.
◆◆◆
It was just past nine the following morning and the worst of the rush hour traffic along Sixth Street had, for the most part, subsided. Traffic was now stop and go, as opposed to stop and stop. The sidewalk was crowded with pedestrians making their way to the office, or to any of the dozens of stores or coffee shops within a two-block radius.
It was springtime, but this was also Cleveland, where the weather experienced huge mood swings, especially this time of year. On this particular morning, the sun was shining bright and the temperature was in the low fifties. As such, people were not walking with their heads down, trying to get to where they were going as quickly as possible, as they had a week earlier when the temperature was in the twenties. Today, instead, they were a little more relaxed, heads up, enjoying the brief respite from what had been a brutally cold winter.
A white panel truck displaying the logo for an office supply company pulled up to the curb in front of the Federal Reserve Bank building and stopped not more than three feet from a sign that read NO PARKING ANYTIME. The driver, a chubby man in his twenties, got out of the vehicle and closed the door.
He stood in the street beside the vehicle for a few seconds before late model blue minivan pulled beside the parked panel truck, stopping just long enough for the chubby man to reach out, open the door and climb inside. The vehicle then continued along its way down Sixth. The entire sequence had taken roughly ten seconds.
Watching the scene unfold from across the street was a tall, thin man in his early thirties. He was holding a cell phone in his right hand, a burner phone as it turned out. Once he saw that the blue minivan had cleared through the intersection of Sixth Street and Superior Avenue, he began to silently count to ten before punching the number on the phone’s speed dial. He then turned around, tossed the phone into a nearby wrought iron trash receptacle, and began walking casually down Superior Avenue, taking advantage of the tall buildings to shield himself from the effects of the enormous blast that occurred just seconds later.
The concussive force from the powerful explosion blew out the glass windows of most of the buildings on that block, including the front entrance to the Federal Reserve Bank, sending panicked survivors screaming in all directions. A red sedan was sent hurtling into the air and through the plate glass window on the second floor of the building across the street from the bank. It just happened to be passing even with the white panel truck the moment it exploded.
Several blocks later, as the tall man strolled past the public library, a light green minivan pulled alongside him and stopped briefly. The side door slid open and the tall man climbed inside, tapping a button on the door frame to cause the door to automatically close behind him.
Anna, who was driving, turned her head slightly to the right and said, over her shoulder, “Good morning, Fósforo. Make sure you fasten your seat belt. They say the streets are very dangerous here in Cleveland.”
She pulled the minivan back into traffic and followed the signs directing her to Interstate 90. She glanced down at the digital clock on the dash. Nine-twenty. They would be at the rendezvous location in Columbus by noon
◆◆◆
“I just received confirmation from my person in Cleveland that the target has been struck,” said Graciela, setting down her smart phone on the table beside her. She reached for the remote control and ratcheted up the volume on the television. “It should be breaking on the news any minute now.”
The Frenchman nodded and reached for his demitasse cup of expresso. He took a sip before setting the cup back on the saucer on the end table. He smiled.
“When will they arrive back here?” he asked.
“Tomorrow night,” she replied. “They will split into two groups and travel in separate cars. Today, they will be driven to Memphis, Tennessee, where they’ll spend the night. Then they’ll change vehicles and drivers and be driven straight through to Laredo the next day.”
“Now it’s time to put our disinformation campaign into high gear,” he said, slurping the last of his expresso and setting the demitasse cup down on the saucer with emphasis. “With any luck, we can get the Americans running around in circles and chasing their own tails.”
“Yes, they make it a lot easier than it should be,” she said, shaking her head in amazement while rubbing her hands together in delight.
“These days, they hate each other more than they hate us,” he said matter-of-factly. “All we have to do is present them with a scenario that they desperately want to believe and then watch them run with it.”
◆◆◆
Chapter 13
MEANWHILE, BACK ALONG THE Texas-Mexico border, an entirely different threat to the domestic tranquility was stepping up his game.
“You should not have ignored my warnings, pendejos,” said Chucho, standing over the bodies of two men in their late twenties, the blood from their bullet wounds still spreading ever so slowly as it covered the front of their formerly powder blue guayabera shirts. Neither man seemed long for this world and, judging by the look in their eyes, both knew it.
Chucho tucked his pistol back under his belt, against the small of his back, and let his shirt drop back down to cover the weapon from view. He smiled. This was his favorite part of the job, the part he was best at, the part where he made the decision of who got to live, and who didn’t.
It was up to him and nobody else. El Coronel had told him to seize control of the Hebbronville Corridor by any means necessary, and that’s exactly what he intended to do. He liked being in charge and he had no intention of letting El Coronel down.
Some twenty feet to his right, next to a sprawling cottonwood tree, lay three more men who appeared to be in their teens, each with patches of peach-fuzz where a beard would have eventually grown had they chosen a less dangerous occupation. Unlike the two older men sprawled at his feet, these three were clearly dead, snuffed out in the prime of their lives. They had been killed in the brief, but violent, gun battle less than a minute earlier. They were the lucky ones because their agony was now over.
Chucho knelt down next to one of the dying men, grabbing the man by the collar and lifting his face to within inches of his.
“You had a chance to spread my warning with your voice,” he said, now whispering to the man. “Now you’ll deliver my message with your dead body.”
The dying man, blood seeping from the corner of his mouth, made a gurgling sound. His eyes gave a plaintive look, as if begging to be put out of his misery.